TMCnet News
Cadaver-sniffing dog testimony tossed out of Zapata trial(Wisconsin State Journal, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 1--The jury hearing the 1976 murder trial of Eugene Zapata next week won't hear anything about cadaver-sniffing dogs, a Dane County judge ruled Friday. The specially trained dogs, which were said to have caught whiffs of human remains in several places linked to Eugene Zapata, are no more reliable than "the flip of a coin," Circuit Judge Patrick Fiedler said in excluding testimony about the dogs during Zapata's month-long trial, which is scheduled to start on Tuesday. The dogs were used to search the former Zapata home on Indian Trace on Madison's East Side, storage lockers once rented by Zapata, a rental car he used during a 2005 visit to Wisconsin, the Juneau County Landfill and other homes and properties that Zapata occupied after his wife, Jeanette, vanished on Oct. 11, 1976. They were to be a key element to the state's case in prosecuting Zapata for first-degree murder. Testimony that the dogs indicated they smelled human remains at several of the sites, without evidence that any remains were actually found, would be too prejudicial to be heard by the jury, Fiedler said. Assistant District Attorney Robert Kaiser said the state will not immediately appeal the decision. Fiedler agreed with an analysis of the dogs' records by defense attorney Stephen Hurley that concluded that the dogs were incorrect 78 percent of the time for one dog, 71 percent for another and 62 percent for a third. He said they had to be right just over half of the time in order for him to consider allowing the testimony. "The state has failed to convince me that it's any more reliable than the flip of a coin," Fiedler said. Fiedler held a hearing a week ago on the issue, and at its close sounded skeptical about the prospect of admitting testimony about the dog searches. He asked that prosecutors put together data to show him how reliable the dogs -- Sammy, handled by Illinois dog handler Theresa Christ, and Norse and Cleo, handled by Madison Police Officer Carren Corcoran -- have been in past searches. The handlers also testified on Friday in support of the dogs' effectiveness in a variety of situations. Independent corroboration of the dogs' findings was a key requirement, Fiedler said, based on his reading of search dog-related court cases from other states. None of those cases involved cadaver-sniffing dogs, he said, but in each of them police found evidence that corroborated the dogs' performance. There have been no cases that directly involve the admissibility of evidence about cadaver-sniffing dogs where no remains were found, he said. The report put together by prosecutors asserted that the three cadaver dogs were correct between 60 and 69 percent of the time. Kaiser argued that in the Zapata case, the dogs' findings are corroborated by other circumstantial evidence that will be part of the state's case, such as the fact that Jeanette Zapata left all of her belongings behind and was never seen again; that when police tried to search the home after her disappearance they were turned away at the door by Eugene Zapata; and the fact that Zapata bought cleaning chemicals and a filter mask in 2005 before cleaning out storage lockers he had rented. Kaiser also argued that the dogs' findings amounted to "trace evidence" and that he never contended that they were "anything other than a tool to locate, in our case, the body of Jeanette Zapata." But Hurley responded that the dogs "are being used to prove that a crime was committed here." To see more of The Wisconsin State Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.wisconsinstatejournal.com. Copyright (c) 2007, The Wisconsin State Journal Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |