Prompted by DNA testing in recent years, authorities in Norfolk and Carroll County are investigating several possible, decades-old wrongful convictions.
Virginia Department of Forensic Science has disclosed DNA test results for more than 70 persons where testing of biological evidence discovered in forensic case files from 1973 to 1988, failed to identify the convicted person.
The test reports were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the media and the Innocence Project made possible -- as of July 1 -- by special legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly this year.
Failure to identify a convicted person's DNA in evidence, primarily blood and semen, can be consistent with and even prove innocence but may mean nothing.
However, as permitted by the legislation, the department said two Commonwealth's attorneys are withholding four reports involving five people -- four in Norfolk and one in Carroll County -- deemed critical to ongoing criminal investigations.
Amanda M. Howie, a spokeswoman for Gregory D. Underwood, the Norfolk Commonwealth's attorney, said that of 11 reports sent to Norfolk for consideration, they objected to the release of four concerning 3 individuals and 2 cases.
Howie wrote in an email that, "Our objection is appropriate as our legal review of the original circumstances of each case associated with the (reports) is still ongoing."
She said that in every case sent to her office, "a thorough, routine process is followed to determine what, if any, legal impact the testing and resulting (report) has on the case."
Other investigations in other of the roughly three dozen jurisdictions with exclusion cases may be in progress, as well. The Commonwealth's attorneys office in Carroll County has not returned calls today for comment.
Concerned that police and prosecutors might not be aggressively pursuing potential innocence cases sent them in recent years by the forensic science department, the General Assembly made the exclusion cases subject to FOIA requests as of July 1.
All of the released cases either are or will be reviewed by the Innocence Project in New York along with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and innocence projects at the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia law schools.
There have been 10 DNA exonerations in Virginia as a result of testing evidence discovered taped in the old case files of forensic serologists, primarily those of the late Mary Jane Burton who, contrary to lab policy, taped evidence samples in her files.
Among those cleared are Richmond residents Thomas E. Haynesworth and Victor Burnette wrong convicted of rapes. In addition to clearing Haynesworth, DNA implicated Leon Davis Jr. a notorious serial rapist now serving life in prison.
There are another half dozen Richmond cases but at this point Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Herring says those test results are either of no consequence or not as significant as they were in the Haynesworth and Burnette cases.
Three cases are in Chesterfield County where authorities believe one may be under review but none have led to an exoneration.
The old evidence was first discovered in 2001 by the department of forensic science in response to a request from the Innocence Project on behalf of Marvin Anderson, cleared of a 1982 rape in Ashland.
After Anderson and two other men were cleared of old rape charges, Gov. Mark Warner ordered testing in a sample of just 31 old cases. The sample testing cleared two more men and in 2005 Warner ordered testing in all appropriate cases that could be found.
Since then testing in hundreds of old cases have cleared seven more people -- including a man wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder in Emporia whose convictions were later tossed out of technical grounds and not actual innocence.
Included in the exclusion cases released by the state forensic lab are those of two high-profile killers, Jens Soering and Kenneth Wayne Woodfin but the results do not appear to have persuaded anyone of their innocence.
Soering a former University of Virginia student was convicted in the 1985 stabbing deaths of his girlfriend's parents, Derek and Nancy Haysom, in Bedford County. The Haysoms' daughter, Elizabeth, is serving 90 years for her role as an accessory.
Soering's lawyer has asked Gov. Bob McDonnell to support parole and deportation for Soering in light of the 2009 DNA tests that failed to find Soering's or Haysom's DNA in crime-scene evidence.
A McDonnell spokesman, however, said the governor strongly believes that Soering must serve his full sentence in Virginia and that he will continue to oppose any extradition efforts.
Kenneth Wayne Woodfin was sentenced to three life terms for three 1984 murders, 22 years for shooting a Richmond police officer, and 94 years for wounding a Hanover County deputy sheriff. Woodfin's DNA was excluded in testing of items from the scene of the Hanover shooting.
Hanover authorities do not believe the DNA exclusions in two other cases there warrant exoneration.
Copyright 2012 - Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
