Canada seeks DNA testing for man serving rape sentence in Mo.

ST. LOUIS -- The Canadian government is urging DNA testing for a Canadian citizen who has already spent 16 years in prison for a rape he claims he didn't commit.

Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs sent letters last week to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, asking both to honor Circuit Judge Thomas Grady's order for DNA testing for Kenneth Charron.

"We support this request, given that some information suggests that Mr. Charron may have been wrongly convicted," said Reynald Doiron, spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada's equivalent of the U.S. State Department.

Reaction to court order

Joyce and Nixon have appealed Grady's Aug. 2 ruling, with Joyce claiming DNA results would be inconclusive. Joyce was out of town Wednesday, but Ed Postawko, who heads the sex crimes unit in the circuit attorney's office, said, "At this point, we don't feel there's a sufficient basis" for DNA testing.

A spokesman for Nixon said only that the state supports Joyce's handling of the case.

Canada's intervention was welcome news to Charron, 51, who is serving life plus two 30-year terms at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific.

He has spent the past eight years filing court appeals for DNA testing.

"It's been a long, hard battle, but it's going to happen," Charron said in a telephone interview.

Charron grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, and Toronto. After a stay with an uncle in Texas, he came to St. Louis in 1985 to help rehab a house and spent a short time in a city jail for possessing a stolen toolbox.

But Charron said he was not involved when two men broke into the home of a 59-year-old deaf woman and her 79-year-old mother in 1985.

The victims identified one of the men, whom Charron said he had met in the city jail. He implicated Charron.

The other man was convicted of robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Charron was convicted of robbery and raping the 59-year-old, with a biologist's testimony linking Charron's blood type to semen used as evidence.

Changes in technology

Charron's supporters say DNA evidence, now much more sophisticated, should be conducted on vaginal swabs taken from the victim and semen stains on a curtain valence.

The problem, Joyce has said, is that the semen stains could have been left by someone else who had consensual sex with the victim.

But Grady ruled there was a "reasonable probability" Charron would not have been convicted if he could have been excluded as the semen source.

"It is not apparent to the court how the valence could have been contaminated with semen samples from anyone other than the perpetrator," Grady wrote.