Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
\ In the first convictions based on DNA evidence in Roanoke Circuit Court, two men have admitted robbing and sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman in a vacant house.
But their guilty pleas to reduced charges - along with three earlier acquittals in other Roanoke cases involving DNA - indicate that the high-tech crime-solving process is not a foolproof tool for prosecutors.
The process, also known as "genetic fingerprinting," allows laboratory technicians to match crime-scene evidence with suspects by determining with nearly absolute certainty that a blood, fluid or tissue sample came from a certain individual.
Based on DNA evidence alone, it appeared that prosecutors had a strong case against Roger Lee Banks and Courtney Hubbard.
Banks, 34, and Hubbard, 38, were charged with abducting an 18-year-old woman from a Campbell Avenue restaurant in February, taking her at gunpoint to an abandoned home on Day Avenue, and raping her.
The woman told police that Hubbard held her down while Banks raped her. DNA tests, which matched Banks' blood samples to semen found in the woman's vagina, concluded that the odds of someone other than Banks having sex with the woman were one in 744 million.
But as strong as the DNA evidence was, the woman's version of what happened was almost as weak.
She first told police and a nurse that she was raped in an alley, but later said it happened in a vacant house. That was just one of the inconsistencies in her story that led to an agreement allowing Banks to plead guilty to aggravated sexual battery.
In exchange for Banks' plea to the reduced charge, prosecutors agreed to drop the rape and abduction charges against him two weeks ago. Banks, who has been in jail since shortly after the Feb. 24 incident, was sentenced to 18 months.
If the two cases had gone to trial, lawyers for Banks and Hubbard were expected to have used the woman's inconsistent statements to challenge her credibility and suggest that she consented to sex.
"This case rises and falls on the believability" of the woman, said defense attorney Thomas Lloyd, who represented Hubbard.
On Wednesday, Hubbard pleaded not guilty in Roanoke Circuit Court to charges of rape, robbery and abduction. The prosecution's case fell apart as soon as the 18-year-old took the witness stand in the bench trial.
After testifying that she earned $15 by selling her blood at the Plasma Center on Campbell Avenue the afternoon of Feb. 24, the woman broke into tears as she told of how she then met Banks and Hubbard at a nearby restaurant.
After a brief recess, the woman decided she was emotionally unable to go forward. Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Greg Phillips said the woman - who had been raped previously by another man - was "terrified" at the prospect of having to face Hubbard in court.
"I think the case had gone on for so long, and with each day she had to think about it, to the point that it got to be more than she could take," Phillips said.
Phillips agreed to drop the rape and abduction charges. Hubbard pleaded guilty to robbery, and received a suspended five-year sentence. The robbery charge stemmed from the $15 and a Walkman radio taken from the woman during the attack.
Even though Hubbard and Banks escaped serious prison time on rape and abduction charges, Phillips said DNA played an important part in the case - bolstering the woman's account that Banks had sex with her.
"When the fact finder has in front of him the numbers of one in 744 million, and the defendant knows that, it does make him more apt to plead," Phillips said.
In other cases involving DNA in Roanoke state courts, the procedure has been used to show innocence more often than to prove guilt. Since 1989, DNA has been used in three other Roanoke prosecutions, with the following results:
In the case of a man charged with having sex with a 14-year-old girl, DNA tests matched his blood to that taken from the girl's aborted fetus, concluding that he was 590 million times more likely than a randomly selected man to be the father of the aborted fetus.
However, a judge dismissed the charge because he said prosecutors had not shown that the man acted with criminal intent. The man testified that he awoke one night in a drunken stupor and had sex with the 14-year-old, who was sleeping in the same bed, mistakenly thinking that she was his wife.
In the case of a woman charged with leaving her newborn boy to die in a Mountain Avenue trash bin, felony child-neglect charges against her were dropped after DNA tests excluded her as the child's mother.
And in the case of two men charged with raping a 13-year-old girl at gunpoint after driving her to a wooded area, rape and abduction charges were dropped when DNA tests showed that semen found in the girl's vagina could not have come from the defendants.
by CNB