West Virginia Convicted rapist seeks acquittal on DNA evidence

By Zac Taylor The Charleston Gazette CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- In 2002, Joseph Buffey stood before a judge and admitted that he raped an 83-year-old woman in her Clarksburg home the year before. The judge spent about an hour making sure Buffey understood the ramifications of the plea. Lawyers for Buffey also apparently explained to him that he could postpone the trial until the results of a DNA test came back, which could potentially dissolve his link to the crime. "This guy stood up under oath and said 'I did it; here's what I did,'" said David Romano, the Harrison County prosecutor who prepared the case against Buffey. Buffey has spent nearly a decade in prison for the rape of Ms. L. He did not see the results of the DNA test until two years later, when he filed a motion that compelled investigators to unearth the rape kit. The link between Buffey's DNA and the DNA found at the scene of Ms. L's rape proved to be inconclusive, experts found. However, in May, the results of another, more sophisticated test appeared to all but exonerate Buffey. Today, with the help of a national organization that advocates for prisoners who might have been wrongfully convicted, Buffey is fighting to clear his name. The new test shows the seminal fluid found on Ms. L was unique to an unknown male profile in one of 40 billion possible Caucasian males. First, though, Buffey's lawyers hope a Harrison County judge will allow the results of the second test to be entered into a national FBI database and matched to the profile of the unknown man who might have committed the rape. "We could potentially solve the crime and exonerate Buffey at the same time," Innocence Project lawyer Nina Morrison told the Gazette-Mail last week. The man with the knife In the early hours of Nov. 30, 2001, Ms. L woke to find a young man standing at her bedside. At knifepoint, the assailant forced Ms. L out of bed and walked her downstairs, where she gave him $9 out of her purse, according to previous Gazette-Mail reports. The attacker then raped the elderly woman several times. He kept a pillow over her face so she could not identify him later. The only descriptors of the man that Ms. L managed to come away with that morning was that he was young -- and that he was alone. After he was finished, the rapist bound Ms. L's hands behind her back with belts, tied her legs together and left. The previous night, several young men from the area reportedly burglarized a Salvation Army facility. Investigators determined days later that Buffey had been involved in the burglary and arrested him and two accomplices on Dec. 7. One of the men, Andrew Locke, told police that Buffey had raped Ms. L, according to a court brief filed by Morrison and Buffey's co-counsel, Morgantown lawyer Sarah Wagner Montoro. Police questioned Buffey, and while he readily admitted to breaking into the Salvation Army, he denied any role in Ms. L's rape. At about 3 a.m., after hours of questioning, the interrogation ended when Buffey told police that he broke into Ms. L's home to rob her, but insisted that he did not sexually assault her, according to the court brief. Ms. L was not asked to view him or any other suspects in a lineup. After being charged with the rape, Buffey provided police with a blood sample so the West Virginia State Police lab could conduct a DNA test. Later, a grand jury indicted Buffey on 14 felony charges, including the Salvation Army burglary, the robbery and sexual assault of Ms. L, and several unrelated prior charges, according to the court brief. On Feb. 12, 2002, Buffey pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and one count of first-degree robbery. According to Morrison's brief, Buffey agreed to the deal because it promised to give him a lighter sentence than what he would have faced on his combined 14 charges. The judge sentenced Buffey to 40 years in prison for the robbery and 15-35 years for each rape charge. 'Unquestionable evidence of innocence' In 2003, Buffey filed a petition for post-conviction relief that compelled investigators to pull the State Police lab results of the blood test that Buffey had before his trial. The results, according to Morrison, had been in an unopened envelope attached to a box of other physical evidence in the case. Because Buffey already had pleaded guilty to the crime, the investigator did not open the results because of his high caseload, according to Morrison's brief. The results indicated that Buffey's DNA possibly could be excluded from the DNA found at the scene of Ms. L's rape. Experts later concluded the results were simply inconclusive. Based on the new results, Buffey appealed his conviction to the West Virginia Supreme Court, but his appeal was denied. During that time, however, state lawmakers passed a bill that allows convicted prisoners to order post-conviction DNA tests that would prove a claim of actual innocence. The new law, passed in 2004, requires the prisoner to show, among other things, that the new DNA evidence would be substantial enough to reverse a conviction, and that the testing method is accepted in the scientific community. Based on the statute, Morrison drafted a motion to Harrison County Circuit Judge Thomas A. Bedell. Prosecutor Romano said the state would not oppose the test, and Bedell granted the motion. "I agreed," Romano said, "out of a sense of trying to get to the bottom of what occurred." The new test, according to Morrison, found that DNA from a vaginal swab taken from Ms. L was not matched to Buffey. "We got really strong results this time," Morrison said, adding that the new test shows "unquestionable evidence of innocence." The problem now, according to both parties, is that the new test results were compiled at an out-of-state lab that is unaccredited by the FBI's Convicted Offender DNA Index System (CODIS) database. Buffey's results cannot be entered into the FBI database, which could match the unknown DNA on Ms. L to someone else, until a judge grants the process in a court order. "The problem with the database search is that they had the testing done by an unaccredited lab," Romano said. If the unaccredited lab results show up in the FBI system, then the State Police lab could lose its own accreditation, Romano said. "It's like getting a driver's license," he said. "You might be an Indy 500 driver, but if you don't have a driver's license, you're not permitted on West Virginia roads and you get a ticket." Morrison said that, regardless of a database hit, Innocence Project attorneys probably will file another appeal based on the new test results. Published: Fri, Oct 28, 2011