DNA Analysis in Crime Cases Waiting for Its Day in Court

In October, Los Angeles police were called to the emergency room of a Woodland Hills hospital to investigate a report of an alleged rape.

The two officers met Deborah Haywood, who was being treated for injuries to her head and chest suffered in a car accident. Haywood told the officers that she had been raped in the hospital by a male nurse who had wheeled her from an X-ray lab to a secluded room.

Almost a year later, the 30-year-old Calabasas woman is still fighting to bring her alleged attacker, who was arrested but never charged, to justice.

To that end, she and her husband, Bruce Haywood, have led an untiring campaign to persuade the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to use a new genetic technology called DNA analysis to prosecute the man she says raped her. They have hired attorneys, written letters, filed a lawsuit, told their story to the media and even visited a New York lab where DNA analysis is done.

‘Only Hope I Have’

“Right now, the DNA test is the only hope I have of proving what was done to me,” Deborah Haywood said. “I want to use this tool to get justice.”

The Haywoods’ efforts have not yet achieved their goal, but have called attention to prosecutors’ reluctance to use DNA analysis in California criminal courts until they have a seemingly perfect first case.

Prosecutors say they face an unusual problem: Poised at the advent of a revolution in crime detection, they cannot make a decision in the Haywood case, or in others for that matter, without considering whether it will successfully pave the way for DNA cases to follow.

Used to compare the genetic patterns or blueprints in human cells, DNA analysis--or genetic fingerprinting, as it is also known--already has helped gain murder and rape convictions in a handful of other states. The technique allows scientists to match a suspect’s genetic makeup with skin tissue, blood, semen or other evidence from a crime.

“It is going to revolutionize our field,” said Cecil Hider, manager of the California Criminalistics Institute. “This is the biggest aid to investigation since the fingerprint.”

Stand Test of Appeals

But the district attorney’s staff readily admits that it doesn’t want to take genetics into the courtroom until it finds a case able to stand the test of appeals all the way to the state Supreme Court.

The problem with the case, they say, is that Deborah Haywood was intoxicated at the hospital and passed out before reporting the alleged rape. Persuading a jury that she was raped would be difficult, even with the new technology, authorities insisted.

“This is a lousy first case,” said Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Dino John Fulgoni, who monitors potential DNA cases in Los Angeles County. “In order to establish a good record so DNA results will be accepted . . . we have to get a conviction.”

Fulgoni said Haywood’s condition that night leaves the defense an opening to claim that she consented to sex in the hospital.

But the Haywoods and their attorney, Ralph Peretz, find that idea absurd, pointing out that Deborah Haywood had a head injury at the time that required 40 stitches to close.

In a June 22 letter to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, Peretz wrote: “I don’t think any competent district attorney would have difficulty persuading a jury that there was no consent to intercourse when a woman arrives at a hospital with wounds on her head, a possible broken clavicle, and would consent to sexual intercourse by a male nurse who she had never met while her husband was waiting in the emergency room.”

Deborah Haywood has the frustration of a victim who believes that prosecutors might be sacrificing justice in her case. To ensure that this does not happen, the district attorney’s staff has recently reopened the case for review.

“DNA analysis is very new. Prosecutors have to look for the right case,” said Frederick R. Millar Jr., a supervising deputy attorney general who monitors cases in which genetic evidence may be involved. “That can create a situation that is hard for victims to understand. They are looking for justice. But for the prosecutors, there are other concerns in terms of validating this process.”

Applied to crime detection for the first time only three years ago, the technique compares the spiraling strands of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, that are contained in chromosomes and carry the genetic blueprint of each individual.

Each DNA strand contains a unique genetic code or pattern. Scientists can compare the DNA patterns from someone’s blood to the DNA patterns of tissue, hair or fluids taken from a crime and conclude with 99.9% accuracy whether the specimens are from the same individual.

Analyze DNA

In the Haywood case, authorities would analyze the DNA contained in semen found in Haywood and on a hospital blanket and compare it to the DNA from a sample of the suspect’s blood. Authorities said the conclusion would either prove that he had sexual relations with Haywood or completely exonerate him.

The reluctance, so far, of the district attorney’s office to go forward with DNA analysis in the Haywood case illustrates how carefully prosecutors throughout California have approached the issue.

“No one wants to litigate with DNA and then lose it,” said Assistant Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth G. Peterson of Sacramento County. “One bad case and you could freeze it out for a long time.”

California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp said the newness of the technique almost guarantees a tough legal battle in which one poorly prepared case could establish a devastating precedent.

“We better put our ducks in order before we go to court,” Van de Kamp said. “If one person botches this up, they botch it up for everybody.”

Considered one of the strictest states in the country, California requires that new evidence techniques be proved reliable, verifiable and accepted by the scientific community before they can be introduced in court. Just because DNA analysis has been used in courts in eight other states is no guarantee that it will be accepted in California.

“We may even want to wait until they knock off all 49 other states before we try in California,” said Rockne P. Harmon, a senior Alameda County deputy district attorney who is on a state task force studying DNA analysis.

Pressure on Prosecutors

But cases like Haywood’s are likely to put pressure on prosecutors to introduce the technique in court sooner than that.

In several California counties, crime labs are gearing up to begin handling requests for DNA analysis, and prosecutors are looking for appropriate cases, authorities said. Defense attorneys also are beginning to see application of the technology as a tool for the accused.

In Riverside County, a rapist appealing his conviction recently asked for DNA analysis to show his innocence. In San Mateo County this year, prosecutors dropped rape charges against a man who was exonerated by a DNA test that his attorney had sought.

In Los Angeles County, authorities have considered a handful of cases as possible first cases for genetic analysis, but each time the technique was unsuccessful because the evidence sample was too small or unsuitable for testing, Fulgoni said.

He said evidence in two rape-murder cases was recently submitted to private labs for DNA analysis, but the results of the six-week tests are not yet available.

‘Taints Whole Arena’

“If we successfully bring DNA into court but lose the case, then it taints the whole DNA arena,” said Capt. Joe DeLadurantey, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department crime lab. “If we do that, we will have not done the science justice.”

It is against these odds that Deborah Haywood continues to pursue DNA testing for her case.

After she reported the alleged rape at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center on Oct. 9, police moved her to another hospital for treatment and immediately started an investigation. Two weeks later, police arrested Steven P. Coyle, a 34-year-old nurse, on suspicion of rape.

Using standard procedure for a rape investigation, police attempted to match Coyle’s blood type to that of the semen evidence collected in the case. But the lab blood-typing technique was not precise enough to derive a blood type from the semen to be compared to Coyle’s. That left only a more sophisticated technique such as DNA testing as a possible means of making the comparison.

But at the time, DNA analysis was not considered an option and without being able to match Coyle to the semen, the rape case was primarily left to balance on Haywood’s word against the man she accused, authorities said.

Possible Snags

Prosecutors saw problems with that: Haywood had been intoxicated after an evening celebrating a job promotion as assistant manager of a bank branch. And authorities said she had passed out in her hospital bed for two to three hours after the alleged rape took place but before she was able to alert her husband in the waiting room.

Prosecutors declined to file a charge against Coyle, whose attorney has denied that a rape took place.

To be sure, the nine-month campaign Deborah and Bruce Haywood have waged since then has had an impact. The alleged rape is being reinvestigated and prosecutors are expected to decide whether to proceed with DNA analysis by the end of this month. The Haywoods are optimistic but they are not waiting.

In a negligence lawsuit they have filed against Kaiser Permanente and Coyle, they have asked a Van Nuys Superior Court judge to order the DNA analysis. A hearing is set Oct. 4.

“We can’t wait for the D.A. to act,” Bruce Haywood said. “They are not considering just my wife’s case. They are looking at the overall use of DNA. Where does that leave justice for her?”

No Sexual Act Took Place

Unless the testing is done, both Haywood and Coyle will be robbed of the chance to see the case resolved, said Peretz, the former deputy district attorney who represents the Haywoods.

Attorneys for Coyle and Kaiser Permanente said last week that it was their clients’ positions that no sexual act, rape or otherwise, ever took place.

“No sexual act occurred between Coyle and her,” said Coyle’s attorney, John E. Meyers. “He is totally innocent. The woman was drunk and battered by the accident. What she says happened was impossible.”

However, Meyers did not say he would agree to a DNA analysis to attempt to exonerate his client. “We don’t have any duty to prove him innocent. That’s not how the system works.”

Waiting for the legal tangle surrounding her case to be resolved, Deborah Haywood said she has begun to question just how the system works.

“I feel like I got raped by this man and now I am getting raped by the system,” she said.