State v. Bartylla

• Decision Date: 21 August 2008
• Docket Number: No. A07-1166.,A07-1166.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Nicholas E. BARTYLLA, Appellant.

755 N.W.2d 8

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Nicholas E. BARTYLLA, Appellant.

No. A07-1166.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

August 21, 2008.

Lawrence Hammerling, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Benjamin J. Butler, Assistant State Public Defender, St. Paul, MN, for Appellant.

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, MN; and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Linda M. Freyer, Assistant County Attorney, Minneapolis, MN, for Respondent.

OPINION

PAGE, Justice.

Appellant Nicholas E. Bartylla was convicted of murder in the first degree while committing criminal sexual conduct in violation of Minn.Stat. § 609.185(a)(2) (2006), and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the November 9, 2002, murder of May Mary Pelto. At Bartylla's trial, the State presented evidence indicating that the profile of DNA left at the Pelto crime scene was a "cold hit" match to the profile of Bartylla's DNA, which had been entered into a state-mandated DNA database of known DNA providers. In this direct appeal, Bartylla argues through counsel that: (1) the taking of his DNA sample under Minn.Stat. § 609.117 (2002) was a warrantless, suspicionless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution; (2) the trial court erred in allowing an expert to use the "product rule" to describe the statistical significance of the cold hit DNA match; and (3) admission of evidence of Bartylla's previous burglary conviction prejudiced Bartylla's right to a fair trial. In his pro se supplemental brief, Bartylla alleges 14 additional trial errors. We affirm.

On November 8, 2002, Gary McCullum had dinner and watched television with his 88-year-old mother, May Mary Pelto, who lived alone in a fourplex in Maple Grove, Minnesota. He went home around 9:30 p.m. Pelto called McCullum at 12:30 a.m. and said she was going to bed. McCullum called Pelto at about 10 a.m. on November 9 to remind her to take her prescription medicine, but the line was busy. He continued calling Pelto for the next 2 hours to no avail. He eventually went to her home.

As he approached Pelto's home, McCullum noticed the blinds in her bedroom were down, which was unusual. According to McCullum, although he used a key to enter the home, he did not think the front door was locked at the time because there was a lack of resistance when he turned the key to unlock the door. He found Pelto lying on her bed on her back, with the covers pulled up. When he saw injuries on her face, he called 911. He went downstairs and noticed that the sliding glass door, which his mother did not use, was open 3 to 4 inches, although the drapes on the door were closed.

Officers responding to the 911 call found Pelto lying on the bed with no pulse. She had a black eye, "blood [was] coming from either her mouth or her nose area," and there was what appeared to be blood on the wall next to the bed. They also observed the partially open sliding glass door. A crime lab technician on the scene testified that, although Pelto's purse with cash in it was in plain sight, it appeared that nothing had been taken from the home. Investigators from the medical examiner's office took photographs documenting the "essentially undisturbed" crime scene. The position of Pelto's body in the bed suggested that she had been sexually assaulted. A sexual assault kit collected during Pelto's autopsy revealed the presence of semen, confirming that Pelto had been sexually assaulted.

In addition to evidence of the sexual assault, the autopsy revealed "blunt force injury" inflicted on Pelto's face. Pelto had bruising inside her mouth, fractured facial bones, a contusion covering "the whole right side of her face," a superficial brain injury, and small bruises and scratches on her back and hands. In the medical examiner's opinion, the cause of Pelto's death was "homicidal violence" and the manner of her death was "homicide." Without any leads, the Pelto homicide investigation grew cold. Based on a DNA cold hit match 3 years later,¹ the State charged Bartylla with first-degree murder for Pelto's death.

At trial, Detective John Seery testified that he was involved with the Pelto investigation first as an investigator and subsequently as part of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) cold case homicide unit. He testified that there was no evidence of a forced entry at Pelto's apartment. He further testified that DNA analysis was performed on semen taken from Pelto's body at the autopsy. A DNA profile was then developed and entered into a forensic database of DNA profiles from unknown individuals suspected of being involved in unsolved crimes.

Suzanne Weston-Kirkegaard, a DNA analyst from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department Crime Lab, testified as an expert witness for the State. In addition to providing general information about DNA and her laboratory procedures, she testified that she performed the DNA typing of the sperm and semen found on vaginal swabs taken from Pelto's body. She also tested DNA samples from Pelto's son and 53 other known individuals "plus assorted effects from different people" and determined that none of the resulting DNA profiles matched the DNA left at the Pelto crime scene. Weston-Kirkegaard entered the DNA profile from Pelto's unknown contributor into the state-mandated database maintained by the BCA and also asked the BCA to run searches of the profile against the state's database of DNA profiles from known contributors. On January 13, 2006, Weston-Kirkegaard was informed that a match had been made. The match was with the profile of a DNA sample taken from Bartylla, which had been placed in the BCA's DNA database of known contributors pursuant to the requirements of Minn.Stat. § 609.117.² A second DNA sample then was taken from Bartylla that, when compared with the profile of the sample taken from Pelto, confirmed the match. Weston-Kirkegaard testified that all 13 of the DNA loci tested plus the sex chromosomes from the DNA sample left at the Pelto crime scene matched Bartylla's DNA profile. Weston-Kirkegaard also tested multiple objects found at the crime scene for DNA, including the sheet, the carpet, the blood on the wall, a bandage, and a towel. Nothing was found that was not explained by either Pelto's or Bartylla's DNA. In addition, Weston-Kirkegaard testified about the procedure she used to calculate the likelihood of a match between the crime scene DNA and Bartylla's DNA. Using the "product rule," she testified that among unrelated people in the world, it was likely that the DNA recovered from the Pelto crime scene would match only one person.³

There was also testimony that Bartylla's mother lived in Maple Grove at the time of the murder, that McCullum had never heard of Bartylla before being notified by the police that Bartylla was a suspect, that McCullum had no reason to believe Pelto knew Bartylla before her murder, that a woman who was dating Bartylla at the time of Pelto's murder lived with her parents in Maple Grove, that Bartylla visited the parents' home, which was approximately 400 yards from Pelto's home, and that he sometimes slept in the woman's car in her parents' driveway.

At the request of the State, the court admitted evidence of Bartylla's 2004 burglary conviction. The victim, a 40-year-old female school teacher who lived alone with her dog, testified that she returned to her home in Elk River, Minnesota, around midnight on August 27, 2003. She testified that she fell asleep on the couch in the living room and did not believe that she had left any doors or windows open. The next thing she remembers is waking up and not being able to see. She knew she had been injured but had no memory of what happened. She was airlifted by helicopter to the hospital, where she remained for 4 days. She sustained several injuries to the face, including the shifting over of her entire face, damage to the root beds of her teeth, a scar at the back of her neck, severe vertigo, bruises and abrasions on her face, and damage to her ears. Her eyes were swollen shut. The teacher testified that she was not aware of anything having been taken from her house and that she did not know and had not previously had any contact with Bartylla. Finally, there was testimony that the teacher's blood was found on Bartylla's clothes at the time of his arrest.

The only defense witness to testify was Dr. Laurence Mueller, a population geneticist whose testimony focused on the DNA evidence. He testified that there is a debate in the scientific community regarding the reliability of the methods used to interpret the statistical significance of DNA evidence in cold hit cases. According to Dr. Mueller, the chance of a coincidental match is elevated in cold hit cases, and therefore the product rule should not be used. Dr. Mueller identified three competing schools of thought on the proper way to express the statistical significance of DNA matches in cold hit cases,⁴ but he was aware of no experts in the field who would support using the product rule to express the statistical significance of a match in a cold hit case. Dr. Mueller did not calculate how the alternative methods of presenting the statistical significance would change the DNA match probability in this case. Nor did Bartylla seek to counter the State's use of the product rule by offering statistical evidence based on any of those alternative methods. On cross, Dr. Mueller did, however, acknowledge that there was a match between the DNA profile from the Pelto crime scene and the profile taken from Bartylla. He also testified that the fact that no match was found in the DNA database for a 3-year period suggests "something about that rarity" of the match.

Bartylla exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to testify at his trial. The jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree while committing or attempting to commit criminal sexual conduct in the first or...