A Particularly Unsettling Exoneration

At the length truth will out.

-The Merchant of Venice

The Court of Appeals said the evidence was "overwhelming." Nathaniel Maurice Hatchett confessed to carjacking and raping a woman. The victim identified him as her attacker. He was caught driving her car three days after the crime.

And yet he walked out of a Michigan prison this week after serving twelve years, because the semen found on the victim did not match him. The current prosecutor remarked, "We went back in and did a full investigation. We could have fought for a new trial, but our job is to seek justice. It was served today."

And now for the unsettling part: the prosecutor, trial judge, and Court of Appeals knew at the time of his bench trial that the DNA from the semen did not match the defendant, but the 17-year-old was convicted anyway. It now appears that the only "overwhelming" evidence in State v. Hatchett is the proof of prosecutorial abuse and judicial incompetence.

They also knew that at the time Hatchett was caught with her car, the ignition had been popped out. Curious - the carjacker left the victim on the side of the road and took off - with the keys in the ignition. Why would he bust the steering column if he had the keys?

They also knew that some details from the confession did not match the victim's account. For example, the defendant denied robbing her.

But the most burning question concerned the DNA result. When weighed against a victim's cross-racial identification, even against a confession elicited after several hours of interrogation of a teenager, isn't DNA evidence from semen, in a rape case, a trump card?

Apparently not. Said the trial judge: "[The DNA can] hardly be found to represent a reasonable doubt considering all of the evidence in the case. The court does not find that the laboratory analysis is a fact which would lead to a verdict of acquittal."

DNA - not exculpatory? I find that logic quite strange. By the way, that trial judge is now a federal judge - appointed by President William J. Clinton.

But surely there are smarter judges at the Court of Appeals level, right?

The appellate decision is available online. The bizarre logic applied by the unanimous, three-judge panel that affirmed his conviction makes for hair-raising reading.

Said the Court of Appeals: "We agree... that while the DNA test results introduce a slight doubt... there are several plausible explanations for these results." The Court of Appeals goes on to give two "plausible explanations." Not "several" - two.

One. "The victim told the treating nurse that defendant ejaculated 'on' her, and she told the treating physician that she was only 'fairly certain' that defendant ejaculated at all; therefore, it is altogether possible that defendant's semen would not be found in the victim's vagina or in her underpants."

This is quite curious reasoning. Someone's semen was found on the rape victim. Do these three judges have their heads in the sand? How can the judges choose to question the victim's veracity when she described her attacker's ejaculation while simultaneously refusing to harbor any doubt about her identification of Mr. Hatchett as the rapist? They said her evidence was "overwhelming" - and I guess it was, except for the details.

Two. "The donor might have been the victim's spouse."

That is a plausible explanation. So why didn't they obtain a racial profile from the DNA? Or better yet, test the husband? When twenty-five to forty years of a man's life are on the line, why was that question posed but not answered?

As it turns out, the husband was in fact tested. He did not match the DNA from the semen. The prosecutor never brought that fact to the attention of the defense attorney, the trial judge, or the Court of Appeals. He is still a prosecutor today - and he actually denies knowingly putting an innocent kid in prison, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, nothing will come of it. The prosecutor won't be affected. The trial judge now has a lifetime appointment. None of the appeals court judges will even see their names in the paper, let alone be made to feel like court jesters, as they sh0uld. Judges William B. Murphy and Donald S. Owens are still sitting on the Court of Appeals.

Mr. Hatchett is the 216th person freed by DNA, his exoneration coming at the behest of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School's Innocence Project . What a shame for Nathaniel Hatchett that twelve years had to pass before the DNA evidence that was there all along was brought to the attention of fair-minded men.

Comments

[Kevin M. Sullivan]

You would think the courts would not want to keep going down these roads, but apparently they do. Where on earth was this kid's attorney when these questions were being raised? True, he was using a car he knew wasn't his, and he very well may have already had an arrest record. But there is no excuse for "the system" to be fouling up this way. People should be smarter than this.

[Terry]

Just a quick correction. There have been 216 DNA exonerations in the US. Most have been the result of work done by the Innocence Project. The Cooley Innocence Project has been instrumental in the exonerations of Ken Wyniemko and Nathaniel Hatchett. As a former intern with the Cooley Innocence Project, I am proud of the work done there. However, Cooley's project has not been responsible for all 216.

[Laura]

Thank you for that Terry. And cheers to Cooley for its hard work.