A hair found on a bloodied rag at the scene of a slaying 32 years ago was the subject of testimony Monday in Clark County Superior Court.
Jurors had heard DNA links defendant Michael Hersh to the 1978 slaying of Norma Simerly in the victim’s west Vancouver home. What defense attorney Jeff Sowder tried to suggest Monday was that the link is neither definitive nor foolproof.
The amount of hair was sufficient only for testing of mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material passed on by mothers, an expert said.
Defense expert Don Riley, a Seattle biochemist, reviewed work done for the case at an Arizona lab, one of a few in the country that works with mitochondrial DNA.
The mitochondrial DNA printed from the hair matched 10 out of 1,655 mitochondrial DNA profiles of Caucasians on file at the lab; it also matched Hersh’s.
Extrapolating those numbers, Riley said fewer than one percent (0.97) of Caucasians share those maternal genetic markers.
The hair was one of two items from the crime scene able to be tested for DNA. The other was bark chips. From those, a partial, mixed DNA profile was created and testing showed that Hersh cannot be excluded as a contributor.
Sowder raised the question of whether evidence has been contaminated, and Riley told jurors that contamination can never be ruled out in such an old case, particularly when modern protocol for handling evidence and storing it wasn’t followed.
But under cross-examination by Clark County Deputy Prosecutor Tony Golik, Riley said DNA was collected from 11 people who handled the evidence, including detectives from the Vancouver Police Department. Testing showed none of them contaminated the evidence with their own DNA.
Riley also said that in his review of the case, he did not see any direct examples of how the evidence could have been contaminated.
Golik finished presenting his case to the jury April 2, following testimony from Joy Fletcher. Fletcher, now 67, was assaulted in her home 11 weeks after Simerly was killed. Fletcher, who then was known as Joy Towers, recounted the attack and identified Hersh as her attacker.
Both victims were white, middle-class women who were home alone while neighbors were mowing their lawns.
Hersh has spent 32 years in prison for assaulting Fletcher. He’s eligible to go before a state parole board in 2011.
Attorneys are expected to give closing arguments Wednesday.
If convicted of first-degree murder, it’s not clear what sentence Hersh would receive as the crime predates the state’s mandatory sentencing laws. The parole board would set a minimum sentence, and it’s possible Hersh, 49, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
