UPDATE
A District of Columbia judge this morning ordered the immediate release of a man who had spent 28 years in prison, after new DNA testing showed he may have been wrongly convicted of murder.
Donald Gates, who was found guilty of raping and killing a Georgetown University student in 1981, will return to Ohio this afternoon after defense and prosecution lawyers agreed that he should be released from the Tucson, Ariz., penitentiary where he’s being held. However, Senior Judge Fred Ugast of D.C. Superior Court held off on formally overturning his conviction, in order to give prosecutors one week to try to conduct a last round of DNA testing.
The D.C. Public Defender Service had filed a motion last week asking Ugast to exonerate Gates, after testing on recently rediscovered DNA samples from the crime scene ruled him out as the perpetrator. Today, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joan Draper asked that her office be allowed an opportunity to "double check" whether those samples were in fact from Gates and the victim. Defense lawyers opposed the new tests.
Ugast gave Draper until the middle of next week to finish another round of tests.
"I don't want this to go past Christmas," he said.
If Gates is exonerated next week, it would mark a milestone in the history of D.C. criminal justice. U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Ben Friedman said the office could only identify one other instance in which a murder conviction in the District was overturned based on DNA evidence – a 1989 case, during which testing happened before the defendant was sentenced.
“This is the first one in recent memory, and definitely the first where someone has spent a significant time in jail,” Friedman said.
Judge Ugast also asked for an investigation into whether a discredited FBI agent, whose testimony helped convict Gates, had served as a witness in other D.C. murder trials. Michael Malone, a forensic analyst, claimed that two pubic hairs found on the victim matched Gates' own. As early as 1997, however, evidence emerged that Malone had testified falsely at other trials, and he became the subject of a Justice Department inspector general's report. The Justice Department also ordered a review of his work in the Gates matter. Neither PDS nor Judge Ugast was informed.
PDS lawyer Sandra Levick, representing Gates, told the judge that she had only discovered the problems with Malone's prior testimony through her own research, after prosecutors referred to the hair analysis during a November hearing.
"I think this is a matter that affects the credibility of the criminal justice system," Ugast said.
See our earlier story on Gates here.
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