The Supreme Judicial Court today ordered new trials for Michael Cowels and Michael Mims, convicted in 1994 of stabbing a woman to death in Chelsea the year before.
Part of the evidence against the two men was two towels with blood on them, which Suffolk County prosecutors said the pair had used to clean themselves after killing Belinda Miscioscia and dumping her body behind an industrial building.
Testing at the time could not determine if the blood actually came from either the victim or the killers, but more modern DNA testing on the evidence, done in 2008, showed "the blood contained on the towel did not belong to either of the defendants or the victim, but instead to an unidentified male," the state's highest court said today, adding:
We conclude that, given the towels' role as one of the few pieces of physical evidence that corroborated the testimony of a key prosecution witness whose credibility was sharply challenged, the towels likely were a real factor in the jury's deliberations. Consequently, we believe that there is a substantial risk that, had the newly available DNA testing been available at the time of the trial and resulted in the inadmissibility of the towels in the Commonwealth's case, the outcome of the trial would have been different. The defendants, therefore, must receive a new trial.
| Attachment | Size |
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 Complete ruling, Commonwealth vs. Michael Cowels and Commonwealth vs. Michael Mims | 227.71 KB |
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Comments
Doesn't mean they didn't
By anon
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 11:06am
Doesn't mean they didn't commit the murder
Thanks, Perry Mason.
By TommyJeff
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 11:22am
That's quite a hot take.
True, but ...
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 11:30am
This is a major piece of the case against them, and, given the questionable witness, it certainly casts significant doubt, now doesn't it?
Are you implying that they shouldn't get a retrial? This isn't Texas.
Well, not really
By anon
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 11:52am
You might want to read the full decision:
"According to the Commonwealth's serologist, the bloodstains on
one towel -- a small hand towel -- were too small to be tested
without exhausting the sample. Further testing performed on the
other towel revealed a "weak reaction" to type A blood. Both of
the defendants and the victim have type O blood. The
Commonwealth's serologist, however, testified that the reaction
was too weak to draw any conclusions from it, stating that the
blood on the towel could belong to anybody."
That kind of testimony from an expert witness doesn't really constitute "a major piece of the case against them."
Well
By adamg
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:30pm
Read the decision again, too: It starts right out by calling the towels "one of the few pieces of physical evidence that corroborated the testimony of a key prosecution witness whose credibility was sharply challenged."
So in that sense, yeah, the towels were kind of major, major enough to cast doubt on the validity of the verdict and require a new trial.
Physical Evidence
By JakeWark
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 6:46pm
Just a few points to make here:
The import of the towel was debated by the attorneys at trial, but the actual scientific testimony was that there was no way to know whose blood it was. What jurors heard was that the primitive testing available at the time suggested it was from someone with Type A blood, whereas the defendants and victim had Type O. The defense cross-examination and closing argument brought this out at great length (as noted by the trial judge, who denied a motion for new trial in 2011).
What trial jurors did not hear, however, was that DNA from a vaginal swab taken from the victim conclusively and undeniably corroborates the testimony of a key prosecution witness against Mims. It is much stronger evidence than the towel, because it identifies this defendant with a degree of scientific certainty that was unavailable at trial. That is, at trial, all they had was the witness' word that he was there and sex with the victim. The DNA testing proves that he was telling the truth, which, if anything, makes the case stronger, not weaker.
If the case went to trial today then the towel would not be in evidence, but the DNA from the vaginal swab certainly would. And as a result, that DNA would become "one of the few pieces of physical evidence that corroborated the testimony of a key prosecution witness whose credibility was sharply challenged." The difference, of course, is that this piece of evidence is much more probative than the one it replaces (the towel) because it not only corroborates the witness' testimony but actually identifies a suspect by his unique genetic profile in a way the witness couldn't possibly have predicted 20 years ago.
Reading the opinion in full,
By anon
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:39pm
Reading the opinion in full, these two guys are probably actually innocent. All the physical evidence was thrown out as a result of the new testing, leaving only one entirely unreliable witness account and another minor witness statement about a fake alibi.
If this were Texas, this case would probably be making national news right now as yet another death-row inmate cleared decades after the fact.
Does mean you need a new trial, though
By Ron Newman
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 11:31am
Read the full opinion
By anon
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:35pm
If you read the actual opinion from the court, you'll see all the physical evidence in the case was thrown out as a result of the DNA testing. The bloody towel had someone else's blood on it, semen in the victim was someone else's, and the substance on the defendants' shoes that appeared to be blood ...wasn't.
All that remained after this was the testimony of a heroin-addict witness, who only testified after being threatened with being charged as an accessory, and then took a plea deal. He also behaved in the days after the homicide took place in a manner that contradicted his own testimony (he claimed the defendants threatened to kill him the night of the murder, yet he remained friendly with them). And there was another witness who claimed the defendants tried to get him to corroborate a false alibi. That's it.
These guys originally filed for a new trial in 2008 and were denied. Seven years later the Supreme Judicial Court finally heard their case and overturned the verdicts. I doubt the Commonwealth will seek an actual new trial based on the flimsy eyewitness testimony they used in the original trial, unless they want to get an actual acquittal on the official record.
So two very-likely-actually-innocent people have sat in jail since 1993. Twenty-two years. The Commonwealth (that means the taxpayers) are probably going to be paying lots of money to these two for this screw-up, and after 22 years, will probably never be able to track down the real killer.
Not Quite
By anon
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 1:05pm
Might want to re-read that decision. The new DNA testing identified one of the defendants as the source of the semen. That supports the civilian witness. The new DNA testing ruled out the defendants as the source of the blood. That supports the expert witness.
Jeez- this was twenty years ago.
By Dan Farnkoff
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:08pm
That's an awfully long time for people to spend in prison if they're actually innocent. Scary thought.
Scarier thought is
By roadman
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:23pm
the fact that we presume somebody may be innocent after they've already been found guilty not on the basis of incontrovevertible exculpatory evidence that could not have been introduced at the original trial, but just because a new technology to analyze old evidence comes along twenty years after a jury found them guilty.
Are you serious? Are you
By Dot net
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:44pm
Are you serious? Are you really an American? You don't trust that judges know when the scales of justice might have been misweighted? So just let the chips fall where they may?
Hey, its all fun and games with Roadman justice
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:50pm
Until, of course, somebody accuses him of something, people believe him capable of it because he seems to share certain personality traits with the BTK killer, and the prosecutor makes a deal with a supposed witness to testify, and ...
Well then, framing him wouldn't be the end of the world, now wouldn't it?
If DNA testing was done in 2008
By aldos
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 12:57pm
then why are we hearing about this in 2015?
Sometimes the wheels of
By Dot net
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 1:03pm
Sometimes the wheels of justice grind slowly. It's probably been kicking around the appeals level, for awhile, where it has gone back and forth.
because to get to a decision
By tape
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 1:11pm
because to get to a decision by the SJC, it had to go through other lower-court appeals first.
why are we hearing about this now in 2015?
By chris1
Fri, 02/20/2015 - 7:44pm
because they were denied new trials by the lower courts so they kept going higher till someone will grant it. And this court actually opened their eyes and looked at the evidences and seen all of this and finally granted it. That's why we are hearing about this now. This is a huge thing for these two innocent people.
!
By Just Sayin'
Thu, 02/12/2015 - 3:11pm
!
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