Fields v. Idaho
Annotate this CasePetitioner Zack Fields appealed the dismissal of his application for post conviction relief. In 1988, Petitioner was sentenced to death for the stabbing death of Mary Vanderford. Petitioner argued that he was wrongly accused and that DNA test results and affidavits of trial witnesses supported his argument. The district court ordered nineteen latent fingerprints from the murder scene to be run through the national fingerprint database and to have DNA testing of substances found on Petitioner and the victim’s clothing and underneath her fingernails. Testing determined that the fingerprints did not belong to Petitioner, nor did any of the substances contain his DNA. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Petitioner argued that he was entitled to an inference that the victim scratched her attacker because the attacker was close enough to stab her. With no DNA evidence of Petitioner recovered from the murder scene, Petitioner contended the district court erred by not viewing the DNA and fingerprint evidence “in a light most favorable to” Petitioner. The Supreme Court found that there was “nothing but speculation supporting the claim that the scrapings from the victim’s fingernails came from her attacker. We therefore uphold the dismissal of [Petitioner’s] claim . . . because the DNA test results, in light of all admissible evidence, do not demonstrate that [Petitioner] is not the person who committed the murder.”
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