People v. Wakefield No.

107724 (N.Y. App. Aug. 15, 2019)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

The victim was discovered dead in his apartment with a guitar amplifier cord wrapped around his neck. There was no indication of forced entry into the apartment or that a struggle had taken place. There was also no indication that his death was a suicide. After a reward was offered for information about the victim's death, a friend of D came forth and advised law enforcement officials that D had admitted to him that he had killed the victim. Law enforcement collected a buccal swab from D to compare his DNA to that found at the crime scene. The DNA analysis by TrueAllele revealed, to a high degree of probability, that D's DNA was found on the amplifier cord, on parts of the victim's T-shirt and on the victim's forearm. D moved to preclude admission of evidence derived from TrueAllele, or for a hearing under Frye v United States (to test the technology's general acceptance within the relevant scientific community. At the Frye hearing, Mark Perlin, the founder, chief scientist, and chief executive officer of Cybergenetics, testified and the court rendered a decision concluding that TrueAllele was generally accepted within the relevant scientific community. D was convicted of murder in the first-degree and robbery in the first-degree. D was sentenced, as a second felony offender, to concurrent prison terms, the greatest of which was life in prison without the possibility of parole. D appealed. D claims that the Frye hearing was a 'farce' because he did not have the opportunity to review TrueAllele's source code