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Posted on Thu, Nov. 18, 2010
Bloody fingerprint was 'difference between yes and no' in triple murder verdict
BY BETH HUNDSDORFER
News-Democrat
The prosecution's key piece of evidence in Darrell Lane's murder trial -- a bloody fingerprint -- turned out to be the focus of the jury's deliberations as well, one juror said Wednesday.
"That (fingerprint) was the difference between yes and no," said Lavert Gilliam, 57, one of the 12 jurors who acquitted Lane in the Belleville hair salon triple murder case. "We discussed it and discussed it."
After the jurors deliberated for about four hours, discussing the case and casting several ballots, they delivered a "not guilty" verdict for the defendant from North St. Louis, who was just 16 when the murders were committed in 2005.
Jurors got the case after a four-day trial. Lane faced three counts of first-degree murder for the stabbing deaths of hairdresser Michael Cooney, 62, and his customers, Doris Fischer, 79, and her sister Dorothy Bone, 82, on March 2, 2005, at Cooney's home-based beauty salon in west Belleville.
At one point, the jurors stood around a table, examining the bloody fingerprint. And they weren't convinced, Gilliam said.
"We felt for (the Bone, Fischer and Cooney families) and we wanted to do right by them," Gilliam said, "but we couldn't put him in the place."
For the jurors, the case did come down to the bloody fingerprint, Gilliam said, but declined to elaborate on the specifics of the jury's conclusions regarding the fingerprint.
The fingerprint, which prosecutors said belonged to Lane, was found inside Cooney's 2000 Nissan Pathfinder, which was abandoned running with the keys in the ignition behind a liquor store in North St. Louis.
Michael Rucker and Demetrius Davis testified they took the car for a joyride, wrecked it in an alley behind Davis' house, and took Cooney's cell phone and antiques from the vehicle before Davis gave the keys to Rayford "RayRay" Robinson.
Police recovered the SUV from outside Robinson's apartment building. Illinois State Police crime scene investigators discovered three red smears on the right hand side of the leather driver's seat.
A fingerprint was discovered in the center smear. The print, known as People's Exhibit 100 during the trial, required chemical enhancement to allow identification.
Fingerprint analyst David Peck and two other experts, including a defense expert, testified the fingerprint belonged to Lane. David Carter, a retired Illinois State Police blood spatter expert, testified that the fingerprint was made by a finger stained with blood and transferred to the seat.
Meanwhile, St. Clair County Circuit Judge Milton Wharton twice denied a defense motion for a directed verdict. His written order detailing the reasons for his denial was sealed until Wednesday -- the day after the jury's verdict was rendered.
"The only connection of the defendant to this offense is the fingerprint evidence found in victim Cooney's vehicle, an association with persons connected to the items of the victim's personal property and possible discrepancies in the statements to police," Wharton wrote.
"However, it is the opinion of the court that there exists sufficient evidence, when viewed in a light most favorable to the prosecution, to support denial of the motion for directed verdict."
Former Belleville Police Chief Terry Delaney named Samuel L. Johnson, a man convicted of kicking in the back door of Cooney's hair salon in 2003, as the prime suspect in the murder.
A defense witness testified that a man she identified as Johnson came to Cooney's salon four days before the murders, demanding money. Cooney refused to pay, the witness said.
Fourteen calls were placed from Johnson's cell phone to Cooney's home phone in the weeks before the murders, including two the morning of the murders that were placed from Illinois. Johnson also used cash to buy jewelry and cars in the days following the murders.
Gilliam said jurors considered evidence pointing to Johnson, but couldn't find a connection between Johnson and Lane.
"We said 'Holy Shmoly!' to the Johnson stuff, but he wasn't on trial," Gilliam said. "In the end, we couldn't find that (Lane) was in the place, or around the place, and we couldn't put Darrell Lane with Samuel Johnson."
Gilliam said the experience of serving on the jury taught him one thing:
"Each person, I don't care who you are, if you go to trial, you need a good lawyer," Gilliam said. "One side is going to see it and say it is one way, and it might not be that way."
Contact reporter Beth Hundsdorfer at bhundsdorfer@bnd.com or 239-2570.
© 2007 Belleville News-Democrat and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.belleville.com
http://www.bnd.com/2010/11/18/1480955/j ... t-the.html

Man not guilty in Belleville triple murder

BY NICHOLAS J.C. PISTOR • npistor@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8265 http://www.STLtoday.com |Posted: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 4:00 pm
Updated at 4:57 p.m.

BELLEVILLE • Jurors have found Darrell Lane not guilty on all counts in a triple homicide case.
Lane was accused of three counts of first-degree murder in the 2005 stabbing deaths of Belleville hair stylist Michael Cooney and two clients, sisters Dorothy Bone and Doris Fischer. The jury began deliberating the case shortly after 10:45 this morning, and the verdict was returned just before 4 p.m.
Relatives of Lane cheered when the verdict was delivered in Circuit Judge Milton Wharton's court in Belleville. The family of victims conferred privately with St. Clair County State's Attorney Robert Haida and left without comment.
Officials always allowed for the possibility that others were involved in the slayings. Haida said after the verdict that the case remains under active investigation, but noted that to this point there is not enough evidence to charge anyone else.
Lane was taken back to the county jail and released to relatives about 4:45 p.m. "It feels good," Lane told reporters.
In closing arguments this morning, prosecutors said Lane was "caught red handed" when his finger left a bloody print inside Michael Cooney's stolen SUV. Crime scene analysts said Lane's fingerprint was made with Cooney's blood.
"There is no more powerful evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt than a bloody fingerprint," said Jim Piper, an assistant St. Clair County state's attorney.
Lane's defense lawyer said his client made the print after several others had stolen the vehicle and wiped the car down. A fingerprint expert has said that the print could have been made by a damp finger that touched dried blood found on the upholstery.
"That's all he's guilty of ... being inside a stolen motor vehicle," said Andrew Liefer, Lane's defense attorney.
Lane was 16 at the time of the murders of Cooney, 62, Bone, 82, and Fischer, 79, on March 2, 2005, at Cooney's hair salon on Belleville's West Main Street. Lane is the only person ever charged in the case.

Liefer said pressure on police caused them to charge Lane more than a year after the killings, even though considerable circumstantial evidence pointed to another man.
During the trial, Lane's lawyers offered evidence against that other man. They also elicited testimony from two men who said they had used the stolen SUV before giving it to Lane and two of his friends.
Carol Kane testified Monday that she was in the salon, waiting while her husband got a haircut the weekend before the crime, when she witnessed an uncomfortable encounter. She said a man who fit the description of Samuel Johnson, once labeled by police as the prime suspect, came in and told Cooney, "I need that money by next week."
She said Cooney told the man he did not have it, and the man left.
Johnson, of St. Louis, served prison time for attempting to burglarize the beauty shop in 2003 but has never been charged in the murders.
Johnson called Cooney 14 times in the weeks before the killings, several times in the early morning hours, evidence showed. All of the calls lasted 37 seconds or less, with most of them lasting less than 15 seconds, according to evidence in the case.
Johnson used a cell phone to make the last two calls on the morning of the murders. One, at 8:26 a.m., lasted three seconds and was made from Belleville. The next was listed as zero seconds, made about 9:58 a.m. Its origin couldn't be traced.
The murders took place between about 9:30 and 11 a.m.
Johnson, 45, had pawned a bracelet believed to have been Cooney's in the days after the murders, according to statements in court, and also made a $1,000 down payment on a vehicle.
Cooney, Bone and Fischer were found dead by a customer. Together, the three had been stabbed or cut more than 50 times. Police said that the female victims' rings had been taken, and that Cooney, known to carry large sums, had no cash when his body was found.
Terry Delaney, the Belleville police chief at the time of the crime, had labeled Johnson the prime suspect, but prosecutors declined to charge him, citing a lack of forensic evidence. Delaney has suggested that the killings were related to Cooney's personal life.
Delaney was listed as a defense witness but was not called to testify.
Prosecutors charged Lane more than a year after the murders, when they linked his fingerprint to the blood stain inside the SUV. Lane's trial on three counts of first-degree murder began last week.
Liefer, Lane's defense attorney, presented testimony from Demetrius Davis and Michael Rucker, who said Monday that they had found the SUV running - with windows down and keys in the ignition, near a north St. Louis liquor store - and took it. They told the jury they crashed it, wiped off fingerprints and left it with Lane and two of his friends.
The car was found the day after the murders in front of the house of one of those friends, Rayford Robinson, who has since been murdered in an unrelated case, as has the other friend.
Prosecutors argued that because Lane's fingerprint was found in blood, he must have been the killer, or one of them.
Piper said in an opening statement last week, and reiterated on Monday, that others might have been involved but that the bloody fingerprint meant Lane was "intimately" involved.

Copyright 2010 http://www.STLtoday.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 43579.html

I read your story. It is very interesting.

At one point, the jurors stood around a table, examining the bloody fingerprint. And they weren't convinced, Gilliam said.

"We felt for (the Bone, Fischer and Cooney families) and we wanted to do right by them," Gilliam said, "but we couldn't put him in the place."

For the jurors, the case did come down to the bloody fingerprint, Gilliam said, but declined to elaborate on the specifics of the jury's conclusions regarding the fingerprint.

Is the writer saying the jury was second guessing the identification after examining it themselves? Kind of vague there....

Hi "preciouslittle"

Flogging jewelry, eh? At least you could represent yourself up front and post a new thread announcing your true intentions instead of sneaking in the back door by feigning interest in somebody else's post. The clock salesman did that a while back and sold a few clocks. Go ahead. Start a new post. Tell us who you really are. Be honest about it.

Wow. Didn't realize the clocks were so offensive. Hell, I'd give them away if it wasn't so expensive to cut them.

kevin wrote:

Is the writer saying the jury was second guessing the identification after examining it themselves? Kind of vague there....

I thought that as well, at first. By the time I got to the end of the article I realized it was just poor writing. I think the jury was saying that they agreed with the identification, but that they weren't convinced it tied him to the salon where the stabbings occurred. The other article posted in this thread gives light to the defense's argument - that the victim's blood was already in the vehicle when Lane climbed into it, and that's how his print got there. Looks like the jury thought that plausible enough to provide doubt as to his presence at the stabbings.

My eyebrows raised at:

A fingerprint expert has said that the print could have been made by a damp finger that touched dried blood found on the upholstery.

I don't know. I have done ALOT of research with blood prints, drying times, transfer etc. And if I had been asked "Can a damp hand touch dried blood, and then touch a clean surface, leaving behind a bloody impression [that appears like the one in this case or a typical blood print]?" My answer would have been: "I don't know. Research would need to be done specifically to explore that question".

This seems like it would require a lot of variables: amount of moisture on hand, dryness of blood on substrate, time of contact between moist hand and dried blood etc. Lots going on there. Plus, from my research and observations, diluted (sweaty blood) looks quite different than whole blood. I'd be curious to see before and after enhancement photos, etc.

I always get nervous when fingerprint experts opine about activity of 'what someone could have or could not have been doing at the time of deposition' or things they have not specifically studied. This is an example perhaps of over-reaching. Of course, I am going off of the news article, and SINCERELY apologize in advance if it is not accurate of what the fingerprint examiner actually said. Who knows, maybe the local examiner prefaced the statements with tons of caveats and warnings before offering such an opinion.

In any event, best to say "I don't know".

g.

PS-I like the clocks! I have one. I have no problem with bona fide fingerprint examiners peddling their wares here. None of us are ever going to be rich doing this job, so kudos to them to make a buck off of their passion and artistry.

PS-I like the clocks! I have one. I have no problem with bona fide fingerprint examiners peddling their wares here. None of us are ever going to be rich doing this job, so kudos to them to make a buck off of their passion and artistry.

Speak for yourselves-
Introducing: 'Seven minute abs for the fingerprint examiner'.....coming soon to DVD

It's that or the lottery...if I'm still on here making bad jokes 15-20 years from now I don't know what I'm going to do.

ER wrote:Wow. Didn't realize the clocks were so offensive.

Hey, ER, don't misunderstand me. I never meant to denigrate you or your clocks. You were right up front and that deserves the respect of all who visit this site. Heck, one of your clocks is even hanging in the lab where I work. It's the merchants who are not up front, who offer some inane comment on a thread they probably don't even understand, and who then hide their link in their signature line to boost their google rating that I find offensive. Not you at all!

Got it. Sorry I misunderstood.

I hope your coworker enjoys the clock. I've got a couple new pics to post when I can get 5 minutes and then remember to do it.