St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 5

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 5A Friday, march 4, 1994 iTest N. Korean Facilities Searched Sam LeonePost-Dispatch Dr. Robert Allen with a DNA "fingerprint" in 1989 at the American Red Cross office in St. Louis.

Questions have been raised about his DNA test that helped convict a man of murder. Robert Allen's DNA tests were important evidence in some of St. Louis's most-publicized murder and rape cases: Christopher Santillan, a former Country Day student, was found guilty last month of murdering his best friend, Vinay K. Singh. Allen's test found that blood in Santillan's car was Singh's.

Matthew V. Funke was convicted this year of the 1990 murder of 12-year-old Che Sims of Breckenridge Hills. Police had initially arrested Christopher Johnson, but he was freed after Allen concluded that semen found at the scene wasn't his. Allen then matched the semen to Funke. Later, Johnson was re-arrested and convicted of holding down Sims while Funke raped her.

Darryl Davis was convicted in 1992 of raping four women in St. Louis County and acquitted of raping 10 others. The foreman said the jury acquitted Davis where the DNA was the only evidence and convicted him where there was corroboration. Allen's DNA tests cleared another suspect. Dennis Mahaney was convicted in 1992 of raping five women in north St.

Louis County. DNA tests linked Mahaney to three of the victims. At first, Mahaney admitted the rapes but has since claimed innocence. Allen's test cleared a suspect who had been charged in one case. cal error, adding, "There was never a question of which sample we were talking about here." Prosecutor Sheafor said that Allen "couldn't read the exhibit number" and that "he corrected it in the reports." Sheafor and Allen acknowledged that they did not know exactly what was contained in the evidence labeled "swab." But they said they were confident it came from the crime scene.

These mistakes might have been avoided had Allen followed the common forensic procedure of adding his own distinguishing label to the exhibit, said Dr. Edward Blake, the director of a DNA testing lab, Forensic Science Associates in California. "Forensic work requires a great deal of tender loving care for the samples, and this work in the Heaton case doesn't appear to have that kind of quality about it," said Blake. Alleged Scientific Bias Another letter to the prosecutor raises questions about Allen's objectivity in conducting the DNA test, genetic experts say. In a letter Jan.

8, 1992, Allen wrote that he had partially completed the analysis in the Naab murder and that it had so far proved inconclusive. "I hope that at least one of the two remaining markers will reveal a DNA profile belonging to the presumed assailant," he concluded. Allen knew at the time that Heaton was the prime suspect. Allen recently defended his reference to the presumed assailant. "Does it say that I hope we get a result that further incriminates Stuart Heaton? No.

It is I hope we get results. It should not be construed to mean that I wanted results on Mr. Heaton." But Marr, the national genetics expert, said, "I don't know how that could be interpreted as anything other than bias." Marr said in comparison to the rigorous standards of scientific lab work, Allen's test was "garbage." He said the errors were particularly distressing given the weight that juries usually attach to genetic tests. "Juries think that DNA is somehow different from other kinds of evidence foolproof," Marr said. "But there are still people involved in this stuff.

People make mistakes." The St. Louis Red Cross asked Allen to close his lab in 1992 for purely financial reasons, Red Cross officials say. Neil Bassett, principal officer at the Missouri-Illinois Regional Blood Services, said the Red Cross continues to stand behind Allen's test in the Heaton case. Bassett said he has no plans to conduct an internal investi- I From page one the view of other genetic experts. i "This kind of mistake is appalling," said Dr.

Thomas Marr, a computa- tional molecular biologist at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Massa-i chusetts and co-author of a national study on DNA testing. If you don't know which sample goes to which person, you can't be sure whose sample was analyzed." Allen said the errors were "insignificant" clerical mistakes and had no effect on the test conclusion. Blood samples used in DNA tests are usually labeled with the suspect's name as well as the evidence number, Allen said, although he did not know if Heaton's name was on his sample. Don Sheafor, the former state's attorney who prosecuted Heaton, called the errors "a false issue," and said, "You're trying to pick little itty-bitty things out there and give the convicted murderer something to believe in." The procedural problems with Allen's test are the latest questions to surface about the test. In recent stories the Post-Dispatch has also reported that: Allen did not follow some of the safeguards that are recommended by a National Research Council report for suardine acainst bias in eenetic i testing.

An independent genetic expert jj and one-time colleague of Allen's, who reviewed the results of Heaton's DNA test, questioned Allen's conclu-jj sions. The expert said that some of the DNA markings that Allen matched to Heaton did not appear to show up in the test; other DNA markings that tended to exonerate Heaton were ignored by Allen, the expert said. An Illinois appeals court is considering whether to grant Heaton a court hearing to judge the reliability of the DNA test. Heaton, who maintains his innocence, is serving a life sentence at the Menard Correctional Center at Chester, 111., as a result of his conviction in 1992. Three Different Numbers In any investigation, police meticulously label each piece of evidence.

That label, usually an exhibit number, remains the same throughout the life of the case to ensure that police and lawyers can track the chain of evidence. When Naab's body was found July 23, 1991, evidence technicians combed a small amount of semen in VIENNA, Austria (AP) Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency began inspecting North Korean nuclear plants Thursday for the first time in more than a year. A spokesman, Hans-Friedrich Meyer, said at the agency's headquarters in Vienna that a seven-member team had started work at Yongbyon, the site of a large nuclear research complex. The start of inspections follows months of stalling by North Korea while concern mounted among its neighbors and Western governments that it may be hiding a nuclear-weapons program. North Korea still refuses to allow outside visits to two other sites that inspectors suspect could be involved with nuclear weapons.

Officials of the atomic agency have not conducted a full inspection at Yongbyon since February 1992, although representatives were allowed in last May and August to change film and batteries in monitoring equipment. The current inspections, expected to take about two weeks, are intended to determine whether any nuclear materials have been diverted to potential weapons development. North Korea says its nuclear program is peaceful. But it has resisted inspections for a year, and at one point threatened to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korean officials have accused the West of trying to use the atomic agency to spy on military installations.

The North agreed to inspections of its seven declared nuclear sites after talks with the United States last week. The Americans, in turn, promised to cancel military exercises with South Korea and resume high-level talks on improving ties. Undersecretary of State Lynn Davis confirmed Thursday to a Senate subcommittee that the exercises had been canceled for this year. In the resumed talks, to be held in Geneva, the U.S. team will be headed by Robert Gallucci, assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs.

He conducted two previous rounds before they were broken off last summer in a dispute over North Korea's obligations under the treaty. Negotiators made no progress Thursday in the first talks in four months between North and South Korea aimed at easing tension. President Kim Young-sam remained optimistic about better ties. NOW THROUGH SUNDAY, MARCH 13! si ic analysis and was never sent to Allen's lab. Experts on genetic testing criticized Allen's procedures.

"It's obvious he Allen doesn't know how to handle samples," said Marr, the national expert. "This is a major failing." Robert Byman, the lawyer representing Heaton on appeal, called the mistakes tragic. "This would be funny if it didn't lead to a life sentence for an innocent man," Byman said. Byman said he was "stunned" to learn that there were four sub-samples of Heaton's blood. The chain-of-evidence record submitted before the trial disclosed only two such samples.

"What are these two samples of blood we didn't know about?" asked Byman. "If the state didn't turn over this evidence to the defense and we never saw it Stuart Heaton didn't get a fair trial. Every day we learn something new about the shoddy investigation behind the shaky scientific test." Which 'Swab'? Another labeling mistake is documented in a letter of apology Allen sent to prosecutor Sheafor. In a report Jan. 22, 1992, Allen concluded that the genetic material from a "vaginal swab" matched DNA from Heaton's blood.

But in letter to Sheafor on April 30, 1992, shortly before Heaton's trial, Allen apologized because he had "erroneously identified (the) vaginal swab" by confusing the labeling with different swab taken from the victim. In fact, no vaginal swab had ever been sent to Allen for testing. Allen said the problem was a cleri fkmmtm Ratios gation into its conduct. "We have no concern," Bassett said. "He has an outstanding reputation." Allen's lab, like all DNA testing facilities, was not required to be inspected or regulated, and there are no formal accreditation procedures for such labs.

Iran Executes Adulteress 1994, Reuters News Service TEHRAN, Iran An Iranian woman convicted of adultery was stoned to death in the holy Muslim city of Qom, a newspaper reported. The woman, who was married, "had illegitimate relations with others and worked with a corruption gang," the newspaper Resalat said Wednesday. It did not give the date of her execution. 5 OEF from her pubic hair and labeled it as an exhibit. Allen compared the DNA in that sample with separately numbered samples of blood from Naab's boyfriend, her brother and Heaton.

The test ruled out the boyfriend and brother, but found that Heaton's blood matched DNA in the semen. But unlike the numbers on other exhibits, the label on Heaton's blood changed at least twice. Illinois State Police initially labeled the blood as 62-1. Allen, in the report of his test results introduced at trial, used the label 62-3. Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the Illinois State Police, discounted the significance of this first change in numbers.

He said that Heaton's blood sample had been divided into four parts and the number after the dash designated which sub-sample was involved. But Allen gave a different explanation in a telephone interview. After checking his notes from the Heaton case he said that the state's label on Heaton's blood was actually 63 not 62-1 or 62-3. Allen said he had used the number 62 for the blood from either Naab's brother or boyfriend. "I checked my records and the evidence receipts from the state.

Stuart Heaton's was identified as 63 and the other two were 62 and 61. 1 also checked my chain of custody and each case Heaton's was 63." Any reference to 62 was a "typographical mistake," Allen said. McDonald, the spokesman for the Illinois State Police, said he could not explain how Allen attached the number 63 to the exhibit. There was an Exhibit 63, according to Illinois State Police records. It was a dried sample of blood from Heaton that was not usable for genet Mt Chm 4) tm (tniamiMflv a BOUND Tttffi CLOCK HOSIERY -J Ill SAVE ON ENTIRE STOCK Basics Textures Spring Fashion Colors iim wmwsw mmmm mm sin Girdle At The Top Reg.

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