Published: May 11, 2008 10:54 pm            

DNA expert has local ties

EBENSBURG — The New York lawyer trying to get DNA testing that might exonerate a Johnstown man in a 1991 murder said that with his strong belief in the Bill of Rights, it’s a natural that he’s landed on the defense side of the courtroom.

Craig M. Cooley is a staff attorney with the Innocence Project, a national group dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted defendants through DNA testing.

Based in Mahattan, the group has taken up the cause of Kevin Siehl of Johnstown, who is serving life without the possbility of parole in the July 1991 stabbing death of his estranged wife, Christine, 29.

Siehl, now 52, has maintained through the years that he is innocent of the fatal stabbing. He did not testify during his 1992 trial.

The project has asked Cambria County Court to authorize DNA testing of some of the evidence gathered after the woman’s body was found in the bathtub of her Moxham apartment.

The evidence now is in the hands of the prosecutors. Judge Gerard Long will hold a hearing June 13 on the request.

Cooley, who was a federal public defender before joining the Innocence Project in August, said, “We have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and we need to give meaning to the 6th Amendment.”

The 6th Amendment guarantees rights to those accused of crime, including the right to a lawyer, an impartial jury and confronting witnesses.

Becoming part of the Innocence project was a natural step because, he said that defendants with no money - who are provided lawyers at trial and a first appeal – don’t always get that legal assstance for post-conviction appeals “when they really need an attorney.”

In addition, Cooley pointed out that he has a master’s degree in forensic science from the University of New Haven.

He has ties to the local area. His mother, the former Marilyn Faust, grew up in Johnstown, and he spent his first year in college at the Pitt-Johnstown Campus. He is a 1996 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and later obtained his law degree from Northwestern University’s law school.

Currently, he is involved with 45 cases through the Innocence Project. It has cleared more than 200 people in the U.S. since it was founded in 1992 at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshive University in New York City by civil rights lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.

Cooley said that law students assist the staff attorneys on the cases handled through the Innocence Project.

In the cases in which they seek to do the DNA tests, “we say that there’s a strong possiblity DNA can prove the innocence of a person,” he said.

Once the OK is given for the testing, the project has the evidence sent to a lab for the tests and awaits the results, he said. That could take a couple of months, he noted.

If the results are favorable to a convicted person, that could lead either to that person’s being freed from jail or a new trial, Cooley said.

Cooley said that he has not yet had anyone exonerated in the eight months he has been with the Innocence Project.

        

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