NEWS

Appellate dissenters criticize Doorley

Gary Craig
@gcraig1

A split appellate panel has upheld a murder conviction, with dissenting judges chastising Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley for what they claimed was "prosecutorial misconduct."

Assistant District Attorney Sandra Doorley in court during a different case in 2011.

In a ruling released last week, three judges upheld the murder conviction of Howard Wright, who is imprisoned for the 1995 killing of Patricia Daggett. Then an assistant district attorney, Doorley prosecuted Wright.

Wright was convicted of second-degree murder but acquitted of rape in the death of Daggett, whose body was found in an alley off Skuse Street in northeast Rochester.

Wright and Christopher Gifford were arrested in 2006 and charged in the death. Improved testing of DNA evidence helped solve the killings, authorities said at the time.

However, that very DNA evidence is the centerpiece of the dispute among judges with the Appellate Division, Fourth Department of state Supreme Court.

In the ruling Friday, three appellate judges — Nancy Smith, Joseph Valentino, and Gerald Whalen — voted to uphold the conviction. They rejected the claim that the evidence was not sufficient to establish Wright's guilt.

"Although an acquittal would not have been unreasonable, it cannot be said that the jury failed to give the evidence the weight it should be accorded," the decision said.

But two dissenting judges — Eugene Fahey and Edward Carni — said the conviction should be reversed on several grounds, including ineffective assistance of defense counsel and prosecutorial misconduct.

Doorley, the dissenting judges decided, misrepresented the strength of the DNA evidence during her closing argument.

Her "willful and repeated mischaracterization" of the DNA evidence "could have tipped the scales," they wrote.

In her closing, she said that Wright and Gifford, who also was convicted of murder, "thought they had gotten away with murder, but they left their DNA all over the crime." Doorley emphasized that Wright's DNA was on the victim's underwear and on a ligature used to bind her hands.

But the testimony about the DNA did not provide the same certainty of Wright's participation in the crime, the dissenting judges said. While not excluding Wright, a forensics expert testified that the DNA on the ligature also could not exclude the victim's husband, that a vaginal swab could not exclude Gifford, and that the sample from the underwear could not exclude Gifford or the husband.

Wright admitted having sex with Daggett, but said it was consensual.

In a statement Wednesday, the District Attorney's Office said the evidence against Wright was solid, including "both testimony of civilian witnesses who were able to recount Ms. Daggett's final hours and DNA experts who testified at length regarding DNA testing performed on evidence collected during the course of the investigation."

"It is clear from the dissent that the two judges struggled with the science behind the DNA testing that was introduced into evidence," said the statement from office spokesman David Marion. "However, that evidence was properly admitted at trial, and as a result it was certainly appropriate for the prosecutor to comment on the weight she believed the jury should give it during deliberations."

"The jury found Mr. Wright guilty after hearing and considering all of the evidence," Doorley said in the statement. "The majority's decision affirming his conviction is another step in obtaining justice for Patricia Daggett."

Attorney David Kaplan, who handled Wright's appeal, said he plans to ask the state Court of Appeals to hear the appeal.

GCRAIG@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/gcraig1