A DNA lab has ruled that blond hairs found in a van connected
to the 1986 murder of 11-year-old Staci Jazvac are not those of the
victim, as prosecutors suggested during the murder trial of Michael
Rivera.
Rivera, 40, has been on Death Row since a jury
convicted him in 1987 of kidnapping and strangling the little girl
from Lauderdale Lakes.
News of the negative
test results prompted Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne on Friday to ask his
department to review the case.
"I'm asking our people to see
if there is any other physical evidence that we can test in the case
in light of new technology that was not available 17 years ago,"
Jenne said. "They are to get back to me next week."
Rivera's
attorney, Martin McClain, said he welcomed a review of the case by
the Sheriff's Office.
"This is very important, since the
state's case was designed to link Staci to that van," McClain said
on Friday. "If the van was not involved in the murder, it means he
[Rivera] wasn't involved in the murder."
But Carolyn McCann,
head of the appeals unit of the Broward State Attorney's Office,
said the case against Rivera did not rely solely on the hair
evidence.
"This was not, and is not, a hair case. It has a
hair issue now, but it was not and is not a hair case," McCann
said.
The lack of DNA evidence linking Rivera to the crime
does not prove that he did not do it, she said.
DNA testing
was not available when Rivera was first
prosecuted.
One piece of the
puzzle
Other evidence presented in the trial
included Rivera's alleged admissions to three jailhouse informants
that he committed the crime.
He also admitted it in phone
calls to two women. And there was testimony that he had the
opportunity to commit the crime, McCann said.
"It's premature
to predict the significance, if any, of the DNA results. Only one of
those two hairs was introduced as evidence," she said.
The
hair was not presented as being the victim's hair, McCann said, but
rather as being "similar and consistent" with her hair.
"It
was just one piece of evidence the jury had to consider in making
its decision," she said.
Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman
will conduct a status hearing on the DNA findings on Wednesday, said
McClain, who handles appeals for Death Row inmates.
Staci
Jazvac disappeared on Jan. 30, 1986, while riding her bicycle from
her Lauderdale Lakes home to a nearby store to buy school
supplies.
Her body was found 15 days later in a Coral Springs
field, but she had probably been killed shortly after her abduction,
according to court records.
Rivera was a cocaine addict with
a troubled past, records show. He served two years of a five-year
sentence after pleading guilty in 1981 to indecent assault on a
child under 14. He was released in July 1984.
On Feb. 14,
1986, the day before Jazvac's body was found, Rivera was arrested
and charged with the attempted murder and kidnapping of an
11-year-old Coral Springs girl.
Rivera admitted that crime to
Sheriff's Office detectives, but never confessed to Jazvac's
killing. He said he was only fantasizing when he phoned two women
and told them he had killed the girl.
Even if he is
exonerated in the Jazvac murder, he still will spend the rest of his
life in prison for his attack on the other girl.
During the
Jazvac trial, a Sheriff's Office crime lab technician identified the
hairs found in the van that belonged to Rivera's friend Mark Peters.
The technician testified in court that in his scientific opinion,
the hair found on the bed of the van "could be concluded" to be from
the victim.
But the hair test results reported on March 11 by
Mitotyping Technologies, LLC of State College, Pa., an independent
lab, found that "Staci Jazvac is excluded as the contributor of the
two questioned hairs."
McClain also is asking that black
hairs taken from Rivera by Sheriff's Office technicians in 1986 be
tested to see if they match black hairs found on Jazvac's
body.
"Investigators believe it is Michael's hair, but they
didn't present any evidence in court that they were Michael's,"
McClain said. "I'm sure that will help ascertain who killed Staci
Jazvac."
Reports of the DNA findings in the Rivera case come
on the heels of a federal judge's ruling that likely will free Tim
Brown, who is serving a life sentence for the 1990 murder of Broward
Sheriff's Deputy Patrick Behan. Judge Donald Graham threw out
Brown's case after ruling the mentally retarded youth, who was 15 at
the time, did not understand his rights when he confessed to
shooting the deputy. DNA was not an issue in the
case.
A visible pattern
Whatever its
outcome, the Rivera case is the latest in a series of troubling
incidents for the Broward justice system.
Frank Lee Smith
died of cancer on Death Row in January 2000 after serving 14 years
for the murder and rape of an 8-year-old Broward girl. Eleven months
later, Smith, 52, was exonerated by DNA tests.
Jerry Frank
Townsend was released from prison in June 2001 after serving 21
years of several life sentences for six murders and a rape in
Miami-Dade and Broward counties. DNA also cleared Townsend, who is
retarded.
Those cases also concern McClain. Kelly Hancock,
the prosecutor who handled Rivera's case, also helped send Townsend
to prison. And the detectives who interviewed Rivera were the same
ones who investigated Smith.
"There is a parallel between
this and the Frank Lee Smith case involving some of the same
[Sheriff's Office] detectives," McClain said. "We had a
nonconfession that was used as a confession. It is sort of a
pattern."
Ardy Friedberg can be reached at
afriedberg@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4843.
Paula McMahon
can be reached at pmcmahon@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4553.
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