New hair test helps inmate, defense
says
Associated Press
Posted March 22, 2003
|
FORT LAUDERDALE -- A man sent to death row for killing an
11-year-old girl could get a new trial because DNA tests show the hairs
used to link him to the crime did not belong to the victim, the man's
lawyer said Friday.
Michael Rivera was convicted in 1987 of the
abduction and murder of Staci Jazvac, a Lauderdale Lakes girl who vanished
while riding her bike to the store for school supplies.
"We told
Michael about the DNA results, and he's very happy," said Marty McClain, a
death-penalty lawyer who represents Rivera.
McClain was optimistic
his client would get a new trial. The hairs were significant scientific
evidence linking Rivera to Staci's disappearance Jan. 30, 1986. She was
asphyxiated, and her body was dumped in a Coral Springs
field.
Prosecutors focused on two hairs found in a van during their
opening and closing statements to the jury, and a crime-lab technician
testified that the hairs "could be concluded as being" from Staci's head.
The blue van belonged to a friend of Rivera, and Rivera sometimes drove
it.
But mitochondrial DNA testing, unavailable at the time of
Rivera's trial, proved conclusively this month that there is no match. In
the genetic review, the March 11 report from independent tester Mitotyping
Technologies excluded Staci as the source of the hairs.
Former
Broward County prosecutor Kelly Hancock, who tried Rivera, downplayed the
significance of the hairs in a case he considers strong.
"It was a
very insignificant piece of evidence," said Hancock, who is now in private
practice.
Rivera had admitted exposing himself in public, making
obscene calls and accosting young girls. He made a series of ominous
statements to a polygraph detective, including, "Every time I get into a
vehicle, I do something terrible."
