Law eased path to appoint counsel for DNA testing quests.

Byline: Correy Stephenson, BridgeTower Media Newswires

The threshold that an indigent defendant must clear before being appointed counsel to assist him in an effort to obtain post-conviction DNA testing is more relaxed than the one that must be met in order to actually obtain such testing, the North Carolina Supreme Court has ruled in a case of first impression, although the court found that the defendant seeking the DNA testing had failed to satisfy even this more relaxed standard.

Terraine Sanchez Byers was convicted in 2004 of first-degree murder and first-degree burglary charges related to the 2001 stabbing death of Shanvell Burke, with whom Byers had had a romantic relationship that Burke ended.

On the evening of her murder, Burke was in her apartment watching television with a man who testified at trial that he and Burke had heard a loud crash at the back door, and when Burke went to see what happened, the witness heard her yell, "Terraine, stop." The witness fled and called the police. When law enforcement arrived, they found Byers leaving Burke's apartment through a broken window of the door. Officers described him as nervous and sweating, with a deep laceration on his hand.

The officersalready familiar with Byers from prior calls for help from Burkefound Burke's body inside the house, mortally wounded by 11 stab wounds. DNA obtained from fingernail scrapings from Byers' hands, a bloodstain from a cushion on Burke's couch, a swab from the handle of the knife found ,and other bloodstains in the apartment were analyzed by the police crime laboratory and matched either Byers, Burke, or both.

Byers offered no evidence at trial and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He filed a pro se motion in 2017, seeking postconviction DNA testing.

Byers claimed that he was on the other side of town when the attack on Burke occurred and the back door was already "smashed in" when he arrived at her apartment. When he went inside, he was attacked by a man in a plaid jacket who escaped before police arrived, he said.

Byers argued that his struggle with the man explained the presence of his DNA throughout Burke's apartment, and that Burke's previously untested clothing could reveal the identity of the actual perpetrator. He asked for the appointment of counsel to assist him in the DNA testing process. The trial court denied the motion, but a divided Court of Appeals panel reversed.

But Justice Michael Morgan, writing for a unanimous court in...