Summary
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed Lance Bean’s conviction for attempted rape arising from the 1972 rape and murder of Sharon Reher. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting touch DNA evidence, concluding that concerns about contamination and collection methods primarily affected the evidence’s weight rather than its admissibility. The court also upheld the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the conviction.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the district court abused its discretion by admitting touch DNA evidence despite alleged contamination, cross-contamination, and noncompliance with modern DNA-collection protocols.
- Whether sufficient evidence supported Bean's attempted-rape conviction and the district court's denial of his motions for judgment of acquittal.
- Whether sufficiency review must address an additional element included in the jury instruction but not required by the attempted-rape statute.
Holdings
- The district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the touch DNA evidence. Once the general reliability of DNA testing was established by stipulation, alleged contamination, secondary transfer, chain-of-custody problems, and collection-protocol deficiencies generally affected the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility, absent a showing that the particular evidence was so tainted as to be totally unreliable.
- The evidence was sufficient for a rational jury to find Bean guilty of attempted rape beyond a reasonable doubt, and the district court properly denied his motions for judgment of acquittal.
- When a jury instruction includes all statutory elements of the charged crime but erroneously adds an additional element, sufficiency review is measured against the statutory elements of the charged crime, not the erroneously heightened instruction.
Key quotations
“The district court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that the touch DNA evidence was not so unreliable that it ought to be excluded from the jury’s consideration.” (¶41)
“Thus, the law-of-the-case doctrine does not apply here to require this Court to review the State’s proof of an element that was erroneously added to the jury instructions.” (¶61)
“Issues of contamination, secondary transfer, and whether the police followed adequate collection protocols went to the weight of the evidence and were properly presented to the jury.” (¶66)
Factual background
Sharon Reher was found dead in her Laramie apartment after hosting a party attended by Bean and others. In 2011, investigators subjected preserved clothing, bedding, and a fingernail recovered from the scene to autosomal STR and Y-STR DNA testing. DNA consistent with Bean's profile was found in mixtures on Reher's bra, underwear, pants, and the fingernail, although the evidence involved possible contamination and secondary-transfer concerns. The jury acquitted Bean of murder and rape but convicted him of attempted rape.
Procedural history
Bean was charged in connection with the 1972 rape and murder of Sharon Reher. The jury acquitted him of murder and rape but convicted him of attempted rape. The district court imposed a suspended five-to-eight-year sentence and five years of probation, denied Bean's post-verdict motion for judgment of acquittal, and Bean timely appealed.