DNA link key to prosecution’s case in campus rape

FAYETTEVILLE -- Prosecutors say Cesar Michael Figueroa, 24, left a bit of DNA on the shirt worn by a rape victim, tying him to the 2012 assault on the northeast edge of the University of Arkansas campus.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a crime scene drama, it's real life in Fayetteville, Arkansas," Amy Driver, a Washington County deputy prosecuting attorney told jurors Monday.

The 23-year-old victim testified Monday she was walking home from Dickson Street about midnight Sept. 2, 2012. She'd been to a Razorback football game that afternoon, then went out with friends for awhile. She called her roommate as she started the five minute walk home.

"Once I got in the parking lot, I was attacked from behind and thrown to the ground," the victim said. "I tried to fight a lot, it was hard. I was on all-fours and screaming -- really loud."

The woman said she was sexually assaulted and her attacker threatened to kill her but she did not see a weapon and kept screaming. The man eventually got up and ran away. She was not able to get a good description of him.

"I didn't see specifics because of the way I was attacked and the positioning," she said.

Her roommate heard the screaming, called police and came outside but was not able to get a good look at the man as he fled, she said.

The victim suffered cuts, scrapes and bruises and her underwear was torn off and later found in the parking lot by police.

The break in the case came in August 2013 when the Arkansas State Crime Lab got a match between a single evidence sample from the victim's shirt and Figueroa's DNA, Jennifer Beatty, a forensic DNA analyst testified by video link from the Crime Lab to the courtroom.

Beatty had submitted DNA from the crime scene to a state DNA database in September or November 2012 because she had no suspect to compare it to. Figueroa's DNA was collected as the result of an unrelated arrest and submitted to the database. Police cleared several potential suspects before the match was made.

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DNA link key to prosecution's case in campus rape