Published: May 08, 2008 01:18 am            

DNA group takes up local case

EBENSBURG – A national group dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA tests has taken up the cause of a Johnstown man serving life in prison in the 1991 murder of his estranged wife.

Kevin Siehl, now 52, has maintained through the years that he is innocent of the July 1991 stabbing death of Christine Siehl, 29.

Her body was found July 14, 1991, in the bathtub of her apartment in the city’s Moxham section. She had been stabbed more than 20 times.

The Innocence Project has asked Cambria County Court to order DNA testing on evidence gathered by police in their investigation.

“The commonwealth premised its case on rudimentary and misleading serological (blood) evidence and erroneous and false fingerprint evidence,” Craig Cooley, a New York attorney with the Innocence Project, said in a legal brief filed here.

Carrolltown attorney Robert Freeman is working with Cooley.

Today’s sophisticated DNA testing was not available after Siehl’s arrest 16 years ago, Cooley said. In 2002, Pennsylvania passed a law permitting DNA testing when it “can resolve critical questions surrounding a convicted defendant’s guilt or innocence,” he said.

Judge Gerard Long, who presided at Siehl’s trial, will hold a hearing June 13 on the petition for the DNA tests.

Siehl, who is imprisoned at SCI-Huntingdon, was convicted of first-degree murder at his 1992 trial.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Kaltenbaugh said Wednesday that he is unsure whether enough samples remain for DNA testing to be performed.

Cooley identified numerous items that could be tested, including fingernail clippings from the victim and a hair found beneath a fingernail, other hairs, vaginal and anal swabs, the defendant’s clothing, a blood-stained knife found in the kitchen and blood samples from the scene.

A key piece of evidence against Siehl – his upside-down fingerprint on the showerhead in the bathtub where she was found – also is questioned by the Innocence Project.

Trooper Merrill Brant, a state police fingerprint expert, identified it as Siehl’s right thumbprint. He said its position on the showerhead would indicate that Siehl was on the outside of the tub, not inside taking a shower.

But a defense expert maintains that Brant misidentified the print and had no scientific foundation to conclude the print was a fresh one because it “hadn’t started to deteriorate,” Cooley said.

At trial, an alibi defense was raised, in which Siehl’s father and a neighbor testified that they had seen the victim drop Siehl off at the family’s home about 1:30 a.m. He also reportedly was seen by a brother asleep on the couch at 3 a.m. – both critical times in the case.

Siehl’s conviction is being attacked on a second legal front. His post-conviction appeal, which is being handled by federal public defenders, is before the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The case was denied by U.S. District Judge Kim Gibson of Johnstown in January 2007.

Siehl’s conviction and life sentence previously were upheld by state courts in an initial round of appeals and a second post-conviction appeal.





Project primer



Some specifics about the Innocence Project:

-Established in 1992 at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City by civil rights attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.

-Dedicated to exonerating the innocent through post-conviction DNA testing.

-The project has cleared more than 200 people in the U.S.,including 15 who had been sentenced to death.

Source: http://innocenceproject.org

        

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