APPENDIX THE GRANT CASE STUDY AND RECORD null

• Jurisdiction: United States

Appendix The Grant Case Study and Record

Overview

In State v. Grant, Edward Grant was convicted in 2002 for the 1973 murder of Concetta "Penney" Serra in a New Haven, Connecticut, garage. Serra had driven her car into the garage and parked on the top floor. At some point, her attacker got into her car, a fight ensued with a knife, and his blood was left in the car and in a trail to where he had parked his car. (The blood was typed but DNA profiling was not yet invented.) Serra then fled across the lot and tried to escape up a staircase, which was locked at the top. Her body was found stabbed at the foot of the stairs. She was not raped and nothing was taken from her car. Based on these facts, investigators believed the murder was a "crime of passion" by someone Serra knew. They interviewed three former boyfriends and put them in a lineup for possible identification by some people who had been in the garage. A prior boyfriend of the victim was identified the following day in a lineup, but he was ruled out based on his blood type. Another was arrested and charged with the crime, but charges were dropped on the eve of trial when it turned out his blood type did not match the Type O blood trail either.

Investigators lifted one clear fingerprint from a tissue box on the floor behind the driver's seat. The print did not match any of the fingerprints on card files in New Haven at the time. (The Automated Fingerprint Identification System, AFIS, was not yet in operation.) They also found a handkerchief four flights down in the garage, which they initially thought was unconnected to the crime. They later connected it based on a blood trail in the garage which they believed was the attacker's as he searched the garage trying to find his own car.

The case remained a "cold case" for almost twenty-five years until Chris Grice, a fingerprint examiner in the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory (who had been involved as one of the investigators in New Haven twenty-five years prior), did a cold case run of the fingerprint from the tissue box through AFIS. As we saw in the fingerprint chapter, the AFIS report was a series of numbers identifying people. Grice then needed to pull actual prints and visually compare them. Ed Grant was not number 1 on the list. However, Grice eliminated the higher numerical "matches" and identified Grant as the print on the box.

The Investigation

Investigators initially targeted a boyfriend of the victim, who was identified the day after the crime in a lineup. He was subsequently excluded based on the fact that his blood type differed from blood stains believed to be the perpetrator's and left at the scene. They then turned to two other men the victim had known, because they believed that the victim had known her attacker.

None of the fingerprints found at the scene could be matched to anyone except family members of the victim. Blood typing showed the victim's blood type — A — was found where Serra was killed, but Type O blood, believed to be the attacker's, was present in a trail running through the garage. The prosecution's theory was that the attacker was wounded in the attack of Serra and bled as he ran through the garage Investigators took a fingerprint off a bloody tissue box found behind the driver's seat in the victim's car and compared it to the fingerprints cards on file in New Haven, but found no match.

Following the match of the fingerprint on the tissue box to Grant, investigators then got a warrant to take Grant's blood, which they subsequently matched to a small amount of genetic material, believed to be blood, on a handkerchief that had been found in the garage near Serra's discarded car keys. The DNA test of Grant's blood showed that he was the source of the genetic material on the handkerchief. However, none of the blood from the trail in the garage was testable. Serra's keys had been lost. Some of the witnesses had died.

The Trial and Appeal

Grant was tried in May of 2002 for Serra's murder. He did not take the stand. His defense was that he did not know Serra and did not commit the crime. The state was therefore required to prove each element of the crime of murder beyond a reasonable doubt.

The jury convicted Grant largely based on the two pieces of hard forensic evidence — his fingerprint on the tissue box and his genetic material on the handkerchief. His attorneys did not deny that the forensic tests were correct, but argued that there was no evidence to prove that the fingerprint was impressed on the tissue box at the time of the crime. Nor was there any testimony that proved the handkerchief was Grant's or that it was dropped at the time of the crime. They also questioned how only one small spot of "blood" could have remained testable after years of moving the handkerchief from place to place under conditions that deteriorated the rest of the spots beyond testing.

Grant made pretrial motions to exclude the DNA testing based on his argument that the DNA testing method — Short Tandem Repeat—was too new. The court denied the motion. He also made a post-trial motion for a new trial on the grounds of comments made by prosecutors and the failure to sanction the state for losing evidence. He lost that motion too. Grant was sentenced that August to 20 years in prison.

In August of 2006, Grant appealed his conviction. One of his main issues on appeal was that the affidavit used to get a warrant for his blood was defective because it did not disclose certain information about the fingerprint, including that the tissue box was moveable and therefore did not link him to the crime scene. The other was that a statement made by Grant after he was picked up by investigators in which he said "did you hear about the guy in Texas? They got him on a fingerprint too," violated his constitutional rights and was inadmissible.

The state responded that the affidavit for Grant's blood was not misleading and included all necessary information. It also responded that Grant's statement to investigators was made voluntarily and without any violation of law. Grant's appeal was denied by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2008.

Detailed Record

The initial investigation disclosed the following facts:¹ On July 16, 1973, a worker in a New Haven garage discovered a dead woman in the stairwell leading to the 10th level. She was barefoot and dressed in a blue knit minidress with a large bloodstain on the bodice. Her body was curled in a fetal position. She had suffered a single stab wound to the left side of the chest which pierced the lower tip of the heart, causing death within a minute. Medical examination showed she had not been sexually molested. Her name was Concetta "Penney" Serra. She had apparently parked in the garage to shop in the attached mall.

Theory of the Case

The police report filed on July 16, 1973, contained a theory of the crime. Serra was shoeless because she often took her shoes off to drive. She was driving a 1972 Buick. The police surmised that the assailant arrived at the Temple Street Garage in a separate vehicle about four minutes before Serra, based on the entry and exit times stamped on his garage ticket. Serra and her assailant entered from different entrance points at different ends of the garage.²

There was a bloody trail at the scene, which detectives believed to be that of her attacker. The blood was later determined to be Type O. Serra was Type A. Police then concluded that the blood was probably the assailant's. The police suspected the attacker to be someone Serra knew, because she had apparently let him into her car. Her purse and possessions were untouched.

By tracing the blood drops evidently left by the assailant and looking at the placement of Serra's car, police theorized that the assailant got into Serra's car and they rode together to level 9 in her car. On level 9, Serra ran from the car and attempted to leave by the stairwell. She ran up the stairs from level 9 to level 10. A wig or "fall" attached to her hair was found on level 9, where it apparently landed during her flight.

Once on level 10, Serra tried to go to the top level, but found the stairwell was a dead end. Both Serra and her assailant were apparently wounded when she was attacked. The police found a blood trail back down the stairway to level #9, where the blood drops disappeared. Police theorized that the murderer ran back from level 10 to level 9 and got in Serra's car, searching for his own. They found Serra's car on level 8, where it was abandoned in an erratic position. On level 7, the police found Serra's car keys and a man's handkerchief containing bloodstains and traces of an "unidentified substance."

Police found a blood trail from level 8, where the assailant abandoned Serra's car, down to level 5 and back to level 7, when it once again disappeared.

Semen

Experts concluded that there was evidence of semen on Serra's panties and slip. However, it was degraded and may have been residual after washing the garments.³

Suspects

Three men connected with Serra were questioned, but were all eventually eliminated as suspects:

1. Phil DeLieto, Serra's former fiance.
2. Anthony Golino, a high school classmate of Serra's.
3. Selman Topciu, a patient at a dental practice where Serra had worked.

Serra and DeLieto had been in Rhode Island the weekend before she was murdered and had apparently quarreled the prior weekend. DeLieto was identified by an eyewitness in a lineup shortly after the crime, but was cleared based on both his blood type and an alibi.

Anthony Golino had been a classmate of Serra's at Wilbur Cross High School. Golino's wife, Melanie, told police in 1982 that her husband had threatened to kill her, saying essentially that "I will do to you what I did to Penney Serra."⁴ Police questioned Golino, who had a one-inch scar on his left hand that he could not explain. They arrested him for the murder in 1984. In 1987, on the eve of trial, the state executed a search warrant for Golino's...