In re Parks
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The Court of Appeal denied a petition for writ of habeas corpus to petitioner who was convicted of murdering her three young children by setting a house fire that killed them. Petitioner argues that the current scientific understanding of burn patterns and how fire behaves under certain conditions fatally undermines expert testimony offered by the prosecution at trial regarding the cause and origin of the fire at petitioner's home, as well as the fire scene investigation on which the experts based those opinions.
The court concluded that petitioner failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that she is entitled to relief under Penal Code section 1473, subdivision (b). Although petitioner has identified real advances in fire investigation science, the court explained that section 1473, subdivisions (b) and (e)(1) condition the availability of habeas relief on the effect such advancements likely would have had on the particular expert testimony at issue in the particular proceedings at issue. In this case, given the extent to which the same criticisms of the prosecution's expert testimony were litigated at the original trial, the continuing expert debate on these topics reflected at the evidentiary hearing, the lack of any authority rejecting some aspect of the original investigation as improper or incorrect by current standards, and the other evidence of guilt offered against petitioner at trial, petitioner has failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that she is entitled to relief.
The court also concluded, for largely the same reasons, that petitioner failed to establish that the state of fire investigation science at the time of trial rendered her trial so fundamentally unfair as to violate federal due process. The court stated that, although additional scientific support for the defense's expert testimony at trial would have been helpful to the defense in rebutting the prosecution expert's opinions, the absence of such additional support did not necessarily prevent a fair trial.
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