'Intolerable' DNA mixup not grounds for dropping murder retrial, judge rules
Kareem Johnson was once sentenced to death after being convicted in the 2002 slaying of a man found dead outside a North Philadelphia lounge, but he saw his capital murder conviction overturned due to a DNA mixup at trial.
However, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge on Thursday declined to bar the state from retrying Johnson, 31, calling the evidence error “intolerable” but not intentional, reports the Philadelphia Daily News.
Not even Johnson’s defense counsel at the time caught the mistake by police and a prosecutor, which involved a red baseball cap worn by Johnson and a black cap worn by the victim, Walter Smith. Somehow, they assumed there was only one cap, and contended that Smith’s blood on Johnson’s cap helped prove his guilt.
In fact, Smith’s blood was on his own black cap, found near his body, while Johnson’s red cap, which also was at the scene, had only DNA from the defendant’s sweat on its band, as appellate lawyers discovered.
The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation plans to appeal Thursday’s ruling.
Regardless of the result, Johnson is not likely to be a free man anytime soon, since he is serving a life term without parole in another murder case. It concerns the 2004 death of a 10-year-old boy, Faheem Thomas-Childs, who was caught in gang crossfire as he walked to school.
If Johnson is retried in Smith’s slaying, the prosecution has said it will not seek the death penalty.
