Rape-case defense: DNA proves nothing

By Ed Runyan

Jurors will begin deliberations today.

WARREN — Scientific evidence doesn’t prove that Martin E. Warren raped a 13-year-old relative two years ago, the Champion man’s lawyer said Wednesday during closing arguments to the jury.

Jeff Goodman, representing Warren, 60, in his trial in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court on two counts of rape, said a rape kit used at a local hospital after the reported attack showed that a man’s DNA was inside the girl, but it did not prove that it came from Warren.

The girl’s testimony was likewise inconclusive, Goodman said, because it lacked specific details.

The jury will begin deliberations in the case today in the courtroom of Judge Peter Kontos.

Diane Barber, an assistant county prosecutor, said the girl was clear and consistent in remarks to her aunt, a police officer, and the Trumbull County Children Services Board about what Warren did to her.

“Pap raped me,” Barber quoted her as telling her aunt.

Moreover, DNA found on the girl’s underwear was Warren’s, she said. In the scientific terms used by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, the likelihood that the DNA came from anyone but Warren was 1 in 4 quintillion. There are not that many people on the planet, Barber added.

Barber attacked Goodman’s contention during opening statements that Warren had consistently denied the girl’s allegations.

Barber cited Warren’s tape-recorded remarks to a Children Services worker in which he said no one can be “100 percent sure of anything” but that he didn’t think his mental health problems caused him to block out having committed the crimes.

Goodman said the prosecution gave the “excuse” that the girl could not explicitly describe the rapes because she was young, Goodman said.

But in the case of one of the rape counts, if such an act would have taken place, “you would have heard about it,” Goodman said.

In the case of the other rape allegation, the only physical evidence was that someone else’s DNA was in her body, and it did not specifically show whose DNA it was, Goodman said.

The doctor who examined the girl found no bruising to suggest a rape, and the CSB allowed the girl to return to live with Warren and his wife for a time after the allegations surfaced, Goodman noted.

“Should she have been put back in the home? No, but don’t be misled by the red herrings,” Barber told the jurors.

runyan@vindy.com