State man pins vindication hopes on DNA

But he was hungry and exhausted and wanted to go home, he said recently, so he told the detectives what they wanted to hear and assumed that DNA evidence would show he didn't really do it.


		Grant M. Haller / P-I
	Law students Matt Ficcaglia, left, and Theresa Connor, right, have been working with professor Jackie McMurtrie on the Innocence Project Northwest Clinic.

Now, after he spent nine years behind bars, two University of Washington law students say that's exactly what the evidence shows.

New scientific testing has revealed what less advanced techniques couldn't back in 1995: that a trace of male DNA, found in a key place on a mask that the woman's attacker forced her to wear, doesn't match Bradford's.

They're asking for a new trial for the Yakima man, who hopes to become the first convicted criminal in Washington to be exonerated through DNA evidence.

"Having to live with this on his record is a heavy burden. He deserves the opportunity to clear his name," said Theresa Connor, who's been working on the case with fellow law student Matt Ficcaglia.

"Whoever committed this crime is still out there."

Though Bradford served his prison time and went free last month, to him it's not over. He wants a new jury to hear about the unidentified DNA.

"It just shows what I've been trying to tell everybody since I got locked up," Bradford said. "I just want to clear my name and get on to live a normal life."

Yakima County prosecutors, however, say the new results don't show anything clearly. There was DNA from several unknown people found on items from the crime scene, and genetic evidence from at least two -- not including the victim -- was on the mask itself.

"They're really not conclusively exculpatory, in my opinion," said deputy prosecutor Kevin Eilmes, who plans to argue against having a second trial.

He said it's possible that attorneys or jurors handled the mask during Bradford's 1996 trial, leaving behind DNA, or that it has otherwise been exposed to people over the years.

But Connor and Ficcaglia say the evidence is key because of where it was found. It was on electrical tape that had been placed over the eyeholes of the mask.

The genetic evidence -- possibly skin cells -- was on the sticky side of the tape, where it adhered to the mask and likely would have been protected against contamination.

In a sworn declaration, Philip Hodge, a forensic scientist for the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, said the unidentified DNA presumably came from whoever placed the tape on the mask.

The two third-year law students started working on the case as part of the Innocence Project Northwest Clinic, a program led by professor Jackie McMurtrie at the university's School of Law.

They helped investigate it, inheriting it from two previous students, and wrote the appeal that was recently filed with the state Court of Appeals.

They noted that more than 160 wrongfully convicted people across the country have been exonerated through DNA evidence -- including dozens who had falsely confessed to crimes.

They said Bradford confessed only after an eight-hour interrogation by Yakima police, then flubbed more than a dozen details about the crime.

He denied that there was a baby in the house, for example, even though the woman told police her infant was wailing loudly throughout the attack.

He also said he simply left afterward, though the woman said her attacker went through her purse, then used a wire hanger to tie her to the baby's crib.

"One of the things that's most striking is the fact that virtually nothing about his statement to police matched the actual crime," Ficcaglia said. "You see that time and time again in false confessions."

Eilmes, however, points out that the way police interrogated Bradford already has been reviewed in an earlier appeal.

"He did confess to this," he said, "and the process by which the Police Department interviewed him has been upheld by the Court of Appeals."

Police decided to question Bradford about the rape about six months after it happened, when he was arrested on suspicion of indecent exposure not far from the victim's house.

Bradford -- who was 22 at the time and is about 5 inches shorter than the attacker the victim described -- said they told him they had DNA evidence as they pressed him to confess.

"The ironic thing, of course, is that there wasn't physical evidence," Ficcaglia said, "and now the only physical evidence points to his innocence."

P-I reporter Tracy Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8169 or tracyjohnson@seattlepi.com.

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