UPDATE: Expert testifies "99 percent" certainty that Jessop fathered child by 16-old-year
 
TRISH CHOATE
Standard-Times Washington Bureau
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
SAN ANGELO, Texas — ELDORADO — A DNA expert did the math to show jurors Monday that altering calculations to determine paternity would barely change results of paternity testing indicating polygamist sect member Raymond Merril Jessop fathered a child with a 16-year-old.

Forensic analyst Amy Smuts stepped off the stand around 3:30 p.m. Monday, but not before a defense attorney trotted out a list of her documented mistakes in the lab in 2008.

"I switched a sample essentially," Smuts said during Jessop’s child sexual assault trial.

Under prompting from prosecutor Amy Goodwin, Smuts confirmed the handful of mistakes defense attorney Brandon Hudson had cited were the entire list of her documented errors in 2008.

Hudson also raised the question of inbreeding among members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and its possible affect on paternity testing during the child sexual assault trial.

Jessop is accused of sexually assaulting a teenager about half his age in November 2004 at the Yearning for Zion Ranch. Prosecutors allege he took the teen as one of eight "purported wives" in addition to his legal wife.

In Texas, the legal age of consent to sex is 17 unless the underage person is married. Prosecutors allege Jessop’s polygamist lifestyle rules out a legal marriage with the girl, now a woman in her early 20s.

Hudson has been trying to fend off DNA evidence instrumental in the prosecution’s case before 51st Judicial District Judge Barbara Walther.

Goodwin brought up an additional report from the lab where Smuts works, the Center for Human Identification at the University of Health Science Center in Fort Worth.

The report pertained to comparison testing of DNA samples that included Jessop’s brother or half brother, Merril Leroy Jessop. The analysis showed Merril Leroy Jessop wasn’t the biological father of the child in question.

The report was an answer to Hudson’s repeated contention that one of the defendant’s brothers could have been the child’s father, something that could slip by because of the lab’s methods of determining paternity.

Hudson appeared surprised at seeing the report.

But Goodwin said it had been provided to the defense.

Smuts testified for as many as three hours altogether about blood samples, inner-cheek swabs and the testing done on them to determine whether Jessop was the father of the child.

About noon Monday, jurors finally heard from Smuts that paternity tests show a 99 percent probability Jessop is the child’s father.

Smuts and Hudson were serial foes, facing off on Friday during a hearing minus the jury to determine if she was qualified to be an expert witness and if the DNA evidence and paternity testing were generally accepted in the science community.

Then before the morning was out Monday, Smuts was on the stand again, educating the seven-man, five-woman jury about DNA and paternity testing.

Smuts’ "Good morning" to defense attorney Brandon Hudson on Monday sounded wary and battle ready for cross examination from Hudson.

Indeed, she’d done some reading over the weekend.

Hudson’s mission is to throw up roadblocks against and shoot holes in testimony about the paternity testing.

He’s also hoping to cast doubt in jurors’ minds that the chain of custody was strong and unbroken for the samples of blood and inner-cheek cells used in DNA tests to reveal paternity.

One of the defense attorney’s pet peeves Monday morning appeared to be that Smuts, who had written key reports on the paternity testing, hadn’t conducted each and every step of testing for the DNA analysis.

A prosecutor protested that Smuts didn’t have to do that to testify soundly about the DNA evidence and paternity testing.

After Hudson’s objections and whispered conferences at the bench, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther called for a 10 minute recess. It was not yet 11 a.m.

"Watching you in awe," Jessop told the defense attorney outside the Memorial Building, site of the attorney outside of an improvised courtroom for the case.

For the jury, it was like "CSI Schleicher County" without gruesome slow-motion scenes.

Smuts schooled them in DNA: "Essentially, it’s your genetic material."

She told them how many nuclear genetic markers determine parentage at the DNA lab she’s worked at since September 2000: 15 instead of just the 13 many other labs check.

She also told the jury and two alternates that each person gets half of his nuclear DNA from his mother and half from his father.

And where the stuff is: "It’s going to be in ... any bodily fluid basically," Smuts said.

This signals to jurors it’s in both blood and check cell samples used in paternity testing.

To determine parentage, analysts examine a mother and child’s genetic markers, weeding out the half the child has received from the mother.

So the other half "must have come from the biological father," she said.

Before Smuts took the stand Monday, an officer with the Texas Attorney General’s Office testified about the chain of custody for evidence, and Child Protective Services investigator Barbara Cochran testified she’d seen the child and the woman prosecutors allege is her mother at the YFZ Ranch in April during a historic days-long raid of the sect community.

Jurors looked at pictures both of the rosy-cheeked child and the woman the prosecution contends is her mother.

Jessop and 11 other FLDS members were indicted on criminal charges after the April 2008 raid at the ranch. Jessop is the first to go to trial, and evidence seized during the raid will likely weigh heavily in the prosecution’s efforts to prove those charges.

If found guilty, Jessop faces two to 20 years in prison. Jury selection in the trail began a week ago Monday.

Standard-Times staff writer Matthew Waller contributed to this report.
 
gosanangelo.com
Originally published November 2, 2009
 
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