Wrongfully convicted Daniel Holtzclaw, the former Oklahoma City police officer railroaded by his own police department, has been waiting since Feb. 1, 2017, for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to decide whether to grant him a long overdue Evidentiary Hearing on Sixth Amendment Claims that his trial attorney, Scott Adams, was ineffective at challenging the prosecution's misrepresentation of the DNA evidence from the fly of Daniel’s uniform pants. 

We encourage the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to do the right thing and grant Daniel the Evidentiary Hearing to expose the prosecution’s flawed forensic science and his trial attorney’s failure to challenge it. 

The prosecution’s errors made the DNA evidence appear incriminating when it was best explained by innocent non-intimate DNA transfer. 

Violating scientific principles, the State’s forensic analyst, Elaine Taylor, reached incorrect conclusions and provided unscientific trial testimony about the low level of DNA on the fly of Daniel's uniform pants.  The errors culminated in the prosecutor’s false statement that the DNA transferred in the vaginal fluid of a teenager although no stains or deposits were observed and no vaginal fluid was detected. 

Daniel’s trial attorney, Mr. Scott Adams, failed to challenge the prosecution’s DNA analysis errors and object to the prosecutor’s false claim that vaginal fluid transferred the DNA. 

Mr. Adams’ ineffectiveness at challenging the evidence deprived Daniel of a fair trial.  The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a defendant the right to trial counsel, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the right to counsel means the lawyer must be effective. 

“There can be no reasonable strategy ascribed to counsel’s actions in failing to fully challenge the State’s faulty and scientifically unsound presentation of the DNA evidence,” writes Daniel’s appellate attorney in the “Application for Evidentiary Hearing on Sixth Amendment Claims.”  The application can be viewed here:  https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/c9df57_d7627a2e609b448b92e3e0f9459b56f7.pdf

“Counsel’s performance was deficient and [Daniel] was prejudiced such that there is a reasonable probability that, but for these errors, Officer Holtzclaw would not have been convicted of the crimes charged.”

The goal of the Evidentiary Hearing, if granted, will be to convince the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to accept a forensic expert’s affidavit, submitted by Daniel’s appellate attorney, that supports the legal argument of ineffectiveness of trial counsel. 

Daniel’s appellate attorney writes that the affidavit of Dr. Michael J. Spence, Ph.D., “not yet part of the record on appeal, supports Mr. Holtzclaw’s claim that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate and use extant, relevant evidence, by way of his own expert witness, which would have called attention to misstatements of fact by the State’s own expert witness, as well as bolstered an alternate, and innocent, explanation for the presence of one alleged victim’s DNA on Mr. Holtzclaw’s uniform trousers.”

Daniel was presumed guilty after the discovery of an unknown female’s complete DNA profile in a mixture of DNA from at least 3 people, including at least one unknown male, on the fly of Daniel’s uniform pants lacking any evidence of vaginal fluid. 

Detectives then reverse-engineered the case to find the unknown female assumed to be a victim.  The detectives' bias and tunnel vision caused them to railroad Daniel by using his own police records to solicit and procure allegations specifically from at-risk African-American women he had stopped who had significant criminal histories of drug use and prostitution. 

The unknown female DNA profile was eventually matched to a 17-year-old teenager, A.G., after detectives contacted her mother, who sent the girl a picture of Daniel.  The girl then alleged Daniel had raped her through the unzipped fly of his uniform pants on an evening earlier that year.  But the teen had called the officer a “hot cop” later that night, according to her mother’s initial interview with detectives. 

During the trial, the teen’s mother then denied ever telling police that her daughter had called the officer a “hot cop,” even when the mother was confronted with an audio recording of her own words.  The lead detective Kim Davis asked:  “What did your daughter tell you?”  A.G.’s mother replied:  “She said, ‘I met this really hot cop.  He said I had a couple of warrants, but he said, don’t worry about it.'” (OCPD Recorded Interview with A.G.’s mother). 

Despite the problems with the teenager’s allegations, the prosecution presented the DNA evidence as the “smoking gun” to obtain numerous convictions.  The prosecution ignored the innocent explanation for the DNA evidence:  transfer of non-intimate DNA to Daniel’s hands during pat-searches and then to the fly of his pants.

Central to Daniel's appeal is the shoddy work and false trial testimony of the State's forensic analyst, Oklahoma City Police Department’s Elaine Taylor.  She collected and analyzed DNA from the fly of Daniel’s uniform pants after her son-in-law, Detective Rocky Gregory, inserted his bare hand into the evidence bag into which Daniel then placed his pants and belt.  

During the trial, Ms. Taylor falsely testified that there was no male DNA inside the fly of Daniel’s pants.  Yet the DNA quantity data that she herself initialed showed a low level of male DNA in the two samples from inside the fly of the pants.  The male DNA proves that a person's DNA could transfer to the fly of the pants without requiring the involvement of that individual’s vaginal fluid. 

Ms. Taylor also falsely claimed Daniel’s DNA was not found on the fly of his pants when the DNA data were actually inconclusive.  Not all genetic regions of the contributors were detected so it is inconclusive whether or not Daniel’s DNA could be present.

The prosecutor then used Elaine Taylor’s false testimony that no male DNA was found inside the fly of Daniel’s pants to argue in favor of the presence of vaginal fluid.  Prosecutor Gieger argued that if Daniel had simply touched the fly of his pants, innocently transferring the teenager’s DNA on his fingers after searching her possessions, then you should expect to find Daniel’s DNA from his fingers.  (Trial transcript page 4087).  Yet not only was male DNA detected, but also it could have derived from the touch of Daniel’s fingers when he used the restroom or adjusted his clothing.

The misrepresentations of the DNA evidence culminated in the prosecutor’s false statement that it was a “fact” that DNA from the teenager’s vagina transferred in her vaginal fluids to the fly of Daniel’s uniform pants.  The prosecutor told the jury in his closing argument:  “The most important thing about [the teenager] is the fact that DNA from the walls of her vagina was transferred in vaginal fluids onto the outside and the inside -- not of his pockets, not of his cuff, not where he sits, but of the exact location she says his penis came in contact.”  (Trial Transcript p. 4307).

Daniel’s trial attorney, Scott Adams, failed to challenge the prosecution’s numerous forensic science errors and make the jury aware of the male DNA and its implications.

*  Mr. Adams ignored the significance of the DNA samples being mixtures from at least three people, at least one an unknown male.  The male DNA proves that a person's DNA could and did transfer to the fly of the uniform pants without the involvement of that individual’s vaginal fluid, since males don't make vaginal fluid. 

* Mr. Adams did not cite scientific research available before Daniel Holtzclaw’s trial began on Nov. 2, 2015, that proved non-intimate DNA transfers indirectly.  For example, a 2010 study revealed that a woman’s DNA can transfer indirectly from her face and hands to a man’s hands, and then, after the man unzipped his pants, from his hands to his cotton underwear and even his penis during simulated urination. (Sarah Jones and Kirsty Scott (2010) The transfer of DNA through non-intimate social contact, in Conference Report by J. Hulme, Science and Justice, 50: 100-109).  The research was recently corroborated by Sarah Jones et al. (2016) DNA Transfer Through Nonintimate Social Contact, Science and Justice, 56: 90-95.

* Mr. Adams failed to force the OCPD forensic analyst to disclose the low quantity of DNA found on the fly of the pants, even when she testified that she could disclose it (Trial Transcript p. 4082).  The DNA quantity in the four samples from the fly of Daniel’s uniform pants was less DNA than was obtained from Daniel’s patrol car rear passenger door’s interior pull handle, where a single unknown male’s complete DNA profile was discovered. 

* Mr. Adams failed to object to the prosecutor’s false claim that it was a “fact” that the teenager’s DNA transferred in vaginal fluid, leading the jury to be misled and believe Daniel was guilty.

* Mr. Adams also failed to file a motion for severance to separate the women’s allegations into individual trials.  Allowing the accusers to be combined in one trial caused the jury to conclude Daniel was guilty of numerous allegations after jurors were misinformed about the DNA evidence in the teenager’s case.

Interviews with jurors after the trial show they were misled to believe vaginal fluid transferred the DNA.  This misrepresented DNA evidence, unchallenged by Daniel’s trial attorney, led to multiple verdicts because 13 allegations were joined together in one trial. 

For example, a juror D.S. admitted in a media interview after the trial that he believed there was vaginal fluid, saying, "Well, I mean, I'm not a DNA expert. They told us it was DNA from the vaginal fluid from a 17-year-old."  (Crime Watch Daily Investigates the Case of Daniel Holtzclaw (2017, April 28) Telepictures Productions). 

The juror also told the press that a number of jurors were ready to set Daniel Holtzclaw free because they didn’t believe some of Daniel’s accusers...until they heard about the DNA evidence.  “‘There was some jurors that – due to that fact [of] who these victims were – had a hard time believing them,’ [the juror] said.  [He] says that it was DNA evidence on the inside of Holtzclaw’s pants and testimony involving a 17-year-old victim that helped get the deliberations moving.”  (Susan Welsh et al. (2016, May 20). How the Daniel Holtzclaw Jury Decided to Send the Ex-Oklahoma City Police Officer to Prison for 263 Years. ABC News).

Oklahoma’s Attorney General is now making blatantly false claims about the DNA evidence in his attempt to prevent Daniel’s conviction from being overturned. 

In defiance of the vast body of scientific research on secondary DNA transfer, the Attorney General in his “Brief of Appellee” put forward a claim completely contradicted by science:  “All the testimony in the world about secondary transfer would not have explained how [the teenager’s] DNA ended up in this area [the inside of the fly of Mr. Holtzclaw’s pants], an area one would not typically touch when going about his day, even to use the restroom.”  (Brief of the Appellee, p. 46).

The Attorney General also claimed that “there is nothing improper” in the prosecutor’s closing argument that DNA transferred in vaginal fluid “as it is fully supported by the evidence presented at trial” (Brief of the Appellee, p. 34), even though no evidence of vaginal fluid was observed on the fly of Daniel’s uniform pants and the State’s forensic analyst, Ms. Taylor, admitted that from a scientific standpoint she can’t say how the DNA transferred.

Ms. Taylor retired just days after Daniel filed his appeal.  Oklahoma City then deleted all her e-mails.  Most shockingly unfair, the trial judge and the prosecutor held two days of secret hearings about Ms. Taylor’s personnel records in June of 2017 after the Oklahoma Attorney General noticed her personnel file included information that could help Daniel in his appeal.  Daniel and his attorneys weren't even allowed to attend the secret hearings.

What can you do to help Daniel achieve justice and freedom?

* Contact Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt online, telling him Daniel Holtzclaw is innocent and must be freed because the forensic DNA analysis errors caused his wrongful conviction: https://www.governor.ok.gov/contact-us/leave-comment

* Contact local media in Oklahoma, encouraging them to keep covering Daniel’s case because no innocent man should be convicted due to the government’s misrepresentation of DNA evidence in this modern age.

* Let people know that six internationally renowned forensic experts, including Dr. Peter Gill, concluded that the State’s arguments were so fundamentally flawed as to require a new trial for Daniel.  After the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals refused to accept the experts’ amicus brief on scientific issues in the case, the forensic experts released their findings publicly as a "Report on Scientific Issues in the Case of Oklahoma v. Daniel K. Holtzclaw by an International Panel of Forensic Experts," available online at http://www.HoltzclawDNAreport.com 

“I believe I will be awarded a retrial,” Daniel writes from prison.  “When people are able to actually look into the case and research the facts, they are flabbergasted by the injustice.” 

Together we can help Daniel win the retrial he deserves.  Please keep sharing this petition and information about Daniel’s wrongful conviction so we can #FreeDanielHoltzclaw!