On December 30, 2019, Daniel Holtzclaw’s petition for a writ of certiorari was filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by his attorney James Hankins to seek review of the unjust and unconstitutional ruling against Daniel issued by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) in August 2019.   

Daniel’s “cert petition” is now available here on the U.S. Supreme Court website docket.  

The former Oklahoma City police officer’s 29-page petition alerts the highest court in the land to “problematic” secret hearings, “faulty DNA analysis,” “false testimony,” and prosecutorial “manipulation and misleading of the jury.”

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s response to the cert petition is due Feb. 5, 2020.

Daniel’s cert petition focuses on two key legal questions regarding “prosecutorial misrepresentation of scientific evidence at trial” (p. 9) and “improper joinder” (p. 16) of 13 accusers en masse alleging disparate crimes spanning 36 charges. Lumping them all together created “a self-corroborating cascade of testimony” that “reinforced its own credibility through volume.” (p. 7) Daniel “prays respectfully” that the court will “review the judgement” of the OCCA. (p. 20)

Although the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear a case is discretionary because it cannot correct every injustice, Daniel’s petition about his internationally known, high-profile case warrants the Supreme Court justices’ attention for numerous reasons:

FIRST, for the first time since Daniel’s ordeal began in June 2014, the legal record now reflects an accurate account of how the Oklahoma City Police Department’s biased investigation and procurement of 13 accusers went wrong. The cert petition’s statement of facts (p. 3) outlines:

• How accusers on whose charges Holtzclaw was found guilty had erroneously described an assailant “as a short man with blond hair” or “a black man shorter than her height of 5'11" and darker than her own skin tone” – when Holtzclaw is 6'1", pale-skinned, and Japanese-American;
• How accusers on whose charges Holtzclaw was acquitted included a woman who wildly claimed while high on drugs that Holtzclaw had “assaulted her while she was in a hospital bed” in a busy emergency room and another woman “who had told detectives initially that no officer had been inappropriate with her except for a black police officer who had exposed himself to her,” but later lodged a claim that Holtzclaw induced her to expose her breasts; and
• How the OCCA’s factual recitation of the case crucially omitted “that detectives used Holtzclaw’s police records to contact and solicit further complaining witnesses” and specifically sought out “African-American women with ‘drug and prostitution histories and arrest warrants’ to falsely inform them that detectives had ‘received a tip’ that they were ‘possibly sexually assaulted by an Oklahoma City police officer’ who ‘was a really bad guy.’” It was detectives, not Officer Holtzclaw, who deliberately profiled minority women in northeast Oklahoma City to achieve their goal:  winning a conviction, not seeking the truth.

SECOND, the U.S. Supreme Court and the wider public will now be educated about the “false testimony” and “false analysis” of the only independent forensic evidence in the case proffered by the prosecution in an attempt to substantiate any of the accusers’ claims: the “lynchpin” DNA matched to one out of the 13 accusers brought to trial whose mother said she described the officer as a “hot cop.”

Assistant D.A. Gieger falsely told jurors, with no scientific basis, that it was a “fact” that the DNA evidence on the fly of Holtzclaw’s uniform pants could have only come from being “transferred in vaginal fluids” from the accuser.

But, as Daniel’s petition notes, this DNA mixture consisted of at least three contributors, including the female accuser, one male, and at least one or more unknown others. OCPD crime lab analyst Elaine Taylor admitted the DNA could have come from “secondary transfer” via “Holtzclaw’s hands to the fly area of his pants after he had searched her purse,” while also testifying falsely that Holtzclaw’s DNA was “excluded” from the mixture, when it was not.  The prosecution used Taylor’s false claim that Holtzclaw’s DNA was absent to argue unscientifically in favor of the presence of vaginal fluid, even though Taylor observed no stains or deposits on the fly of his pants. (p. 12)

THIRD, Daniel’s petition sounds the alarm on “incompetent government forensic analysts and non-disclosure of faulty DNA analysis and testimony, all under the shroud of a secret hearing attended by government lawyers where defense lawyers were excluded.” (p. 9)

Complicated DNA science is of increasing public concern because of the “inherent opportunity for manipulation and misleading of the jury” (p. 14) by the government -- not just in Holtzclaw’s case, but nationwide. Crime lab misconduct over the past two decades, including OCPD’s infamous Joyce Gilchrist scandal, has resulted in countless wrongful convictions.

Like Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed, whose Supreme Court cert petition is pending, Daniel asks the court to adopt a legal standard for review of scientifically invalid expert testimony that “better reflects the uniquely prejudicial impact that faulty scientific evidence has on lay jurors,” who give “disproportionate weight” to DNA evidence. (p. 14) Daniel’s petition informs the high court of the extraordinary secret hearing process, deemed “harmless” by the OCCA, which denied Daniel the opportunity to involve “scientists able to explain the severity of forensic science errors at the heart of the convictions:”

After the Oklahoma Attorney General disclosed to Daniel’s appellate lawyers that its office had received new information post-trial concerning retired OCPD crime lab analyst Elaine Taylor’s “personnel record,” an internal review of her Holtzclaw trial testimony, the OCCA directed district judge Timothy Henderson to review the information privately in his chambers with both sides present.

Instead, Henderson conducted an ex parte hearing in June 2017 on Taylor’s flawed Holtzclaw trial testimony and other alleged “personnel” matters that barred Holtzclaw’s lawyers from attending--but “allowed the prosecutor [Gayland Gieger] who had misrepresented the DNA evidence in his closing argument...to question witnesses,” including Taylor’s crime lab supervisor.

Daniel’s lawyers were eventually allowed to review the secret hearing transcripts and exhibits, some of which were shared with “multiple outside” government agencies, yet remain sealed and hidden from the public to this day.

But even more problematic than the secret meetings were the OCCA’s decisions that 1) denied Daniel’s request to share the secret transcripts with his scientific expert and supplement an ineffective counsel claim with new information the expert could have provided, and 2) allowed the State an “unfair litigation advantage” to pre-litigate the sealed DNA issues. Both the Attorney General and the District Attorney had access to the information before the secret hearing was convened, while robbing Daniel of the ability to defend himself by questioning witnesses in the hearing. (p. 11-12)

In conclusion, Daniel’s attorney Mr. Hankins writes: “Thirteen separate complaining witnesses telling the jury about thirty-six different types of crimes...combined with the prosecution’s misrepresentation of the DNA evidence, must necessarily have prevented the jury from making a reliable judgment about guilt or innocence.” (p. 20)

Flawed DNA analysis and false testimony on a single accuser’s charges, bootstrapped to dubious testimony from accusers (who were actively solicited by detectives with not a single shred of independent corroborating evidence), undermined the fundamental fairness of Daniel Holtzclaw’s trial. That injustice was compounded by the OCCA’s dismissal of the problematic secret hearing as a mere “footnote.”

Jenny Holtzclaw, pictured above with Daniel in 2019, stated on behalf of her brother and family: “We pray that the U.S. Supreme Court will take note of Daniel’s petition and see the legal, scientific, and national significance of his wrongful conviction. Prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to lie about forensic evidence to juries. The government shouldn’t be allowed to hide crucial information about its crime lab employees, especially when they make false statements about DNA that was innocently transferred. No American fighting for his freedom and life should be banned from secret hearings and barred from presenting outside scientific experts to judges. Daniel is innocent and we will continue to fight in every court of law and the court of public opinion to free him.”

Supporters can donate to Daniel Holtzclaw’s post-conviction efforts through his GoGetFunding campaign (https://gogetfunding.com/free-daniel-holtzclaw/).  Tax-deductible donations to aid in the legal defense of Daniel and other wrongfully accused and convicted individuals can be made through the non-profit UNCUFF THE INNOCENT.