Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991 TAG: 9102020427
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Any evidence should have been introduced eight months ago, when Soering was on trial for murdering his girlfriend's parents, said Commonwealth's Attorney James Updike. And Updike questioned the value of the evidence anyway.
Soering's defense attorney, Rick Neaton, said he will file a motion next week requesting a new trial for the former University of Virginia honors student, based on the recent findings of an Ohio anthropologist.
Claude Owen Lovejoy, a professor of anthropology and associate professor of anatomy at Kent State University, has concluded that Soering could not have created one of several bloody sock prints found in Nancy and Derek Haysom's Boonsboro house after their deaths, Neaton said.
That particular print - identified at the June trial as "LR-5" - was considered too smudged and blurred for comparison by prosecution witnesses.
A different bloody print found in the house - "LR-3" - was compared by a prosecution expert to Soering's sample footprint, and some jurors said that comparison was what clinched their decision to convict Soering.
Neaton's expert, Lovejoy, has also concluded that Soering's girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, could have made the LR-3 print in the house that night, Neaton said.
"Lovejoy's saying he cannot exclude her from having made it," Neaton said. "That's unlike the impression [prosecution expert Bob] Hallett gave the jury: that Elizabeth could not have made it."
Lovejoy's findings, Neaton said, fit Soering's version of what happened the night the Haysoms were slashed to death. Soering maintained that Haysom killed her parents and that he confessed to the murders out of love for her.
Reached at his Ohio office Friday, Lovejoy said he had "no comment at all" on the case because his analysis is "ongoing."
Neaton said Lovejoy will submit a sworn affidavit stating his findings to the Bedford County Circuit Court next week.
Asked why he had not presented such evidence during Soering's trial eight months ago, Neaton said he did not have access to the information. The prosecution only supplied Neaton with one sample of Haysom's footprints, Neaton said.
"As we progressed along, we were unable to recognize the significance of Elizabeth's other prints until after the verdict was in," Neaton said.
In retrospect, he said, he should have gotten an extension on the trial. "Hindsight is always 20-20," Neaton said. "Had I known then what I do now . . . .
"We could not have discovered this evidence with the exercise of reasonable diligence at that time," he said.
Updike, however, said Neaton had plenty of access to prosecution photographs in the weeks before the trial.
"Everything we had was made thoroughly available to them any time they wanted," Updike said. "That they couldn't have known [about this evidence] before is completely untrue."
In fact, Updike said, the defense had received a two-month continuance in the case in order to let their own experts examine the prosecution's footprint evidence.
"After that, I thought they were planning to have their own experts," Updike said. "So I was surprised when they didn't produce someone at the trial."
In addition, Updike said, his expert witness was not allowed at trial to offer his opinion that Soering left the bloody sock prints in the Haysoms' house. Instead, Hallett could only show jurors his comparisons and let them draw their own conclusions.
"There was no opinion evidence introduced," Updike said. "So this expert's testimony would be irrelevant.
"And, I find it all ironic," Updike said. "They objected in the first place to any footprint evidence being admitted at all." Now, Soering's defense attorney wants to use it as a reason for a new trial.
Neaton, who in the past has called sock print comparisons "mumbo-jumbo," said he hasn't really changed his mind. Mostly, the comparisons reveal whether someone can be excluded as the person who left a given print, he said.
Neaton said he has not paid Lovejoy for his work on the case, though he has offered to pay his expenses. Like any other expert witness, Neaton said, "we will pay him if he bills us, but he would not be being paid for his opinion."
Last September, Neaton filed a similar motion for a new trial based on new evidence, but Circuit Court Judge William Sweeney turned down the request.
Neaton said he hopes the answer will be different this time.
"I don't know whether he will grant it," he said. "If he would take the time to look at the prints, he would know."
Asked whether he planned to use the evidence in his quest for an appeal on the case, Neaton said that wasn't the purpose of his motion.
Soering, held in the Southhampton Reception and Classification Center in Capron, is aware of the evidence, Neaton said.
"He feels it might be a way to show the truth," Neaton said.
Soering, Neaton said, is serving as prison librarian.
by CNB