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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

Colorado cinema shooting: Judge allows fingerprint evidence

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James Holmes and lawyer
A judge presiding over the murder case of Colorado cinema shooting suspect James Holmes will let fingerprint evidence linking him to the mass shooting be used at trial, a ruling made public on Monday showed.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour denied a motion by lawyers defending the former neuroscience graduate student that sought to exclude the evidence, arguing that fingerprint comparison is a subjective, inexact science.

Public defenders also had made a similar argument challenging the reliability of firearms analysis, which Samour also rejected earlier this month.

Holmes, 26, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to opening fire inside a suburban Denver movie theater during a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises." 12 moviegoers were killed and 70 were wounded in the July 2012 rampage.

Prosecutors have charged Holmes with multiple counts of 1st-degree murder and attempted murder, and have said they will seek the death penalty for the California native if he is convicted.

The defense challenged the reliability of fingerprint analysis testimony, citing the 2004 train bombing in Madrid that killed 191 people. An FBI investigation initially said fingerprints found at the Madrid scene matched those of an American lawyer, who was arrested but later released after the error was discovered.

But Samour said in his ruling that despite occasional mistakes, fingerprint evidence has been deemed reliable in U.S. courts for more than a century.

"The fact that fingerprint examiners make false positive identifications is more directly related to the competency of the practitioners, not to the reliability of fingerprint comparison as a methodology," he said.

Prosecutors plan to call a police analyst and an FBI agent who matched Holmes' fingerprints to prints lifted from the theater's emergency exit door, firearms, and other items recovered from his apartment, which was rigged with explosives.

The trial is set to begin with jury selection in December.

Source: Toronto Sun, Sept. 16, 2014
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