THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 15, 1995 TAG: 9509130135
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
Mr. Smith takes issue with a number of statements made by me in a letter to the editor in which I took issue with an article by Staff Writer Joe Jackson. That article presented an incomplete and, in my judgment, highly biased picture suggesting that Mr. O'Dell was in fact innocent of his crimes. I will attempt to respond point by point.
1. In my earlier letter I stated that `` . . . O'Dell and his lawyers . . threatening legal action against them if they do not.''
One witness, Connie Craig, reported to us that after the trial someone purporting to be an investigator working for O'Dell's attorneys suggested that she recant her testimony. It is certainly a fact that O'Dell filed lawsuits against many of the witnesses who testified against him, including the woman with whom he lived at the time of his arrest, the lead detectives in the case, the forensic serologist who identified the victim's blood, the two prosecutors in the case. Each and every one of his lawsuits was dismissed.
O'Dell also sent a letter to at least one of the jurors who convicted him, which she certainly found intimidating.
2. ``During court proceedings, O'Dell was given the opportunity to utilize the now-accepted DNA analysis of the bloodstains . . . and O`Dell's lawyers refused to release them.''
I stand by the above statement. In the state habeas corpus hearing in August 1990, the Office of the Attorney General, which was representing the commonwealth, requested a copy of the DNA analysis report. It was refused. O'Dell's lawyers then presented as a witness a scientist who had not done the test to testify as to the results of a single stain (the state serologist found blood consistent with the victim in multiple bloodstains on O'Dell's coat and in his car). The court was never told that the defense's DNA analysis confirmed the finding of the commonwealth's expert as to the blood on O'Dell's coat.
Three years after the Lifecodes, Corp. DNA report was written, an attorney from my office learned how the scientist who did the DNA analysis was approached by an attorney representing O'Dell and prepared an affidavit for the attorney general. It was only when confronted with this affidavit, with the case pending in federal court, that attorneys for O'Dell released the report to the commonwealth and the court - some three years after it had been written.
I should also point out that many questions remain about the Lifecodes tests. Why were only a few of the bloodstains tested? Did O'Dell or his attorneys control the testing by telling them what not to test? I would like very much to know the answer to those and other ques-tions.
Large bloodstains on O'Dell's pants and on the passenger seatcover of his car were never tested by Lifecodes. The stain pattern on the passenger side seatcover was such that it could only have been caused by the flow of an extremely large amount of fresh blood, such as from the victim's bleeding head. A pubic hair and a head hair found in O'Dell's car were consistent with the head and pubic hair of the victim. Why weren't these hairs submitted to Lifecodes for analysis?
3. Selective presentation of some but not all of the scientific tests is misleading. In all criminal cases in Virginia, both the prosecution and the defense are required to disclose scientific reports in full. Civil discovery in habeas corpus actions is even more expansive. The record that went before the Supreme Court of the United States did not mention that O'Dell's own DNA report showed a three-probe DNA match between the stains on O'Dell's coat and the victim's blood. One wonders if Justice O'Connor would have wondered about ``actual innocence'' in this case had the record before the court included the results of all the Lifecodes tests.
4. The date on the letter says all that is needed to respond to Mr. Smith's assertion that the lawyers ``consented'' to the release of the DNA results. It is dated three years after the date on the report, and only after an affidavit was filed by one of my attorneys after we had learned from a third party how Lifecodes was requested by O'Dell's attorneys to handle the reporting of their findings. It was only when O'Dell's lawyers were confronted with this information that the report was ``voluntarily'' turned over to the attorney general.
In another interesting move, O'Dell's lawyers tried to discredit the Lifecodes test that found a match between the bloodstains on O'Dell's coat and the victim's blood. One can imagine what the press might say about a prosecutor who tried to discredit tests done by a state crime laboratory that reported test results showing a defendant to be innocent. O'Dell's attorneys selected Lifecodes to do the DNA testing, yet they try very hard to refute the Lifecodes tests that corroborate all of the other evidence in this case which established O'Dell's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
As to the issue of defamation, it was a reporter from the Tirginian-Pilot who advised one of my prosecutors that he understood that Lori Urs, a private investigator, was working for O'Dell's attorneys when she communicated with him. Both Ms. Urs and O'Dell have repeatedly published false, inaccurate and incomplete accounts of the trial and the evidence in this case, at least one of which has appeared in The Virginian-Pilot. Of course, Mr. Smith can claim that he has not ``attacked'' my office or my staff in the press but neither has he done anything to stop either Ms. Urs or his career-criminal client from doing so.
Robert J. Humphreys
Commonwealth's Attorney
Virginia Beach by CNB