Monte Sereno murder case casts doubts on DNA evidence

It looked bad for homeless alcoholic Lukis Anderson when DNA evidence tied him to a Silicon Valley millionaire's 2012 murder.

But when Anderson's lawyer proved that paramedics who had treated him on the streets of downtown San Jose inadvertently transferred his DNA to the Monte Sereno murder scene, she didn't just clear him. The case is believed to be the first in California and perhaps the nation in which DNA evidence was shown to have falsely placed an innocent person at the scene of a crime, lending credibility to defense lawyers who struggle to convince jurors to view DNA evidence more skeptically.

"Before, we just had hypotheticals, stuff that DAs would say was smoke and mirrors," said Deputy Public Defender Kelley Kulick, who handled the groundbreaking case. "Now, there is a case to support it."

Among defendants now pointing to Anderson's case in hope of clearing their own names are former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr., whose lawyers are challenging felony criminal charges that he was behind a fraudulent campaign mailer allegedly bearing his DNA on the stamp.

While others accused of a crime -- most famously exchange student Amanda Knox -- have used the so-called transference defense against DNA evidence with some success, those defendants weren't able to prove, as Anderson's attorneys did by establishing his alibi, that the DNA evidence had been compromised.

In the pivotal case, Anderson was arrested on murder charges after his DNA was found under the fingernail of Silicon Valley millionaire Ravi Kumra, who suffocated after thieves bound him during a 2012 home-invasion robbery at his gated Monte Sereno estate.

Despite the DNA, nagging concerns about the case persisted. The prosecution saw connections to support the DNA link -- that Anderson had a residential burglary conviction on a criminal rap sheet composed otherwise of nonviolent minor crimes such as being drunk in public, and he had spent time in the same jail dorm with a member of one of the gangs tied to the Kumra killing. But that gang member wasn't implicated in the murder. And while the others accused in the homicide belong to some of Oakland's most violent home-invasion gangs, Anderson didn't seem mentally capable of organized crime. He suffered a brain injury from being hit by a truck and could not even recall his whereabouts that November night.

Kulick pursued every avenue to prove Anderson had nothing to do with the crime, eventually discovering medical records that show on the night Kumra died, Anderson was at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, where he had been taken by ambulance after passing out drunk in downtown San Jose.

His DNA turned up at the murder scene only because paramedics inadvertently transferred it there, via a simple oxygen-monitoring probe they'd clipped first onto his finger and then onto the dead man's. Prosecutors dropped the charges after examining a dossier Kulick put together, interviewing the paramedics and hospital personnel, and reviewing videotape of the crime scene to make sure the paramedics had really treated both men. Anderson walked out of jail five months later.

With the tacit support of the District Attorney's Office, Kulick plans to petition a judge to wipe the Kumra murder arrest off Anderson's record via a document declaring him factually innocent. It's expected to be granted, paving the way for more defense attorneys to tout the example, using the document, at a time when DNA is playing a key role in an increasing number and variety of cases, not just rape or murder. In the near future, for instance, DNA will be immediately tested at the crime scene, using portable equipment that has already been developed in the lab.

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Monte Sereno murder case casts doubts on DNA evidence