In a recent New York gun crime case a the defendant unsuccessfully argued, on appeal, that his conviction should be reversed based on questionable scientific methodologies used by the prosecutor. Originally, the defendant was charged with criminal possession of a gun after a violent altercation in a store. After a jury found him guilty, the defendant appealed, arguing that the court should have conducted research as to whether or not the State’s methodology for extracting DNA evidence was scientifically legitimate. Disagreeing with the defendant, the court affirmed the guilty verdict.
Facts of the Case
According to the opinion, the defendant in this case was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon after an incident inside a local store. The State’s major piece of evidence at trial was video footage taken from a security camera inside the store. The footage showed a group of men holding the defendant against a shelf, then showed the men scattering the scene before the defendant himself ran away. Approximately two minutes later, the footage showed a police officer looking at the shelf where the defendant had been held, finding a gun in the space where only the defendant had just been standing.
Relying on this evidence, a jury found the defendant guilty, agreeing that the video footage sufficiently proved that the defendant had the gun on his person before the men in the group ran away.
The Decision
On appeal, the defendant argued that part of the evidence presented at trial was insufficiently reliable scientific evidence and that the court should have held a separate hearing to determine if the evidence was indeed reliable. Part of the State’s evidence, in addition to the video footage, was DNA evidence obtained from the gun. According to the defendant, the court should have investigated whether or not the methodology of extracting this evidence was accepted as reliable by the scientific community. Because the court did not hold a separate hearing to investigate whether the DNA extraction was legitimate, the defendant argued, his conviction should be reversed.
The court considered this argument and agreed that the trial court was required to hold a hearing but determined that the evidence was harmless because the video evidence was overwhelming . According to the court, the video evidence alone was more than enough for the jury to conclude that the defendant was guilty. Even though the defense argued that it was unclear from the video who exactly was holding the gun, the court stated definitively that it believed after watching the video that it was impossible for anyone else to have had possession of the gun other than the defendant. Given this belief, the court ruled that any error about the legitimacy of the DNA evidence was harmless since the video evidence itself was strong enough to stand on its own.
Consequently, the court denied the defendant’s appeal and affirmed the original guilty conviction. Three Judges disagreed and said the conviction should have been overturned. The decision was 4-3.
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