Inmate DNA testing

The Missouri Supreme Court soon will decide whether a DNA test should be administered to a man who in 1992 confessed to kidnapping and raping a woman after she left her job at a Jackson motel. The woman, left bound with duct tape, later identified Rubin Weeks in a photo lineup. Then-Circuit Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. sentenced Weeks to two concurrent life terms.

The state subsequently revised its statutes to provide for DNA testing of inmates who claim the test will show they are innocent of the crime they are imprisoned for. Weeks' request for a DNA test was rejected by Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court Judge William Syler in 2002, a ruling upheld the following year by the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District in St. Louis.

Before the Supreme Court, the state contends that under the statute identity must be an issue at the trial. But there was no trial because Weeks pleaded guilty.

Post-conviction DNA testing also requires that DNA testing must not have been available at the time of the prosecution. It was, says Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle, who handled the case. He says he filed for a search warrant to test Weeks' blood but that Weeks pleaded guilty before the process was completed.

Weeks' request for DNA testing does not meet the standard in both instances, Swingle says. Swingle sat on the committee that wrote the statute giving prisoners the right to petition for DNA testing.

Weeks' brief before the Supreme Court alleges that his defense counsel was not given the results of a serology test that could have cleared him. Swingle disputes the claim. "The defense was given everything. They were given every scrap of paper in discovery," he said.

According to Weeks brief, the serology test showed the perpetrator to be a "secretor," a person whose blood type can be determined from other bodily fluids. Weeks has the same blood type as the perpetrator but is not a secretor, according to the brief. Swingle says this defense claim also is untrue.

A DNA test of Weeks would prove nothing anyway, he says. The victim said she'd had sex with her husband the night before the rape. She also said the rapist did not ejaculate, Swingle said.

Giving Weeks a DNA test he does not qualify for would bring a flurry of similar appeals from prison, the state argues. After all, guilty inmates have nothing to lose in asking for a DNA test. Tests can be flubbed.

Fine. But inmates who don't qualify under the statute should pay for the test themselves. The cost is about $1,500.