The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has launched a review of a DNA expert accused by defense attorneys of altering her findings to aid the prosecution.
The review was announced late Monday, April 4, after forensic specialist Mary Hong could not support her earlier analysis in a murder case. Hong’s reluctance to testify led to the release of a man who was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge for the 1988 killing of a Buena Park woman.
The District Attorney’s Office now is reviewing all of Hong’s active cases in Orange County to determine the integrity of her work.
Daniel McDermott, 52, was released from jail early Saturday after spending nine years behind bars, six of them since his first trial ended in a hung jury. He pleaded guilty a day earlier to voluntary manslaughter, midway through a murder trial in the killing and rape of 18-year-old Gehmine Chandler.
Faced life sentence
McDermott could have faced a sentence of life without the possibility of parole if convicted. Instead, he was sentenced to time already served in exchange for his manslaughter plea.
Assistant Public Defender Chuck Hasse, representing McDermott, said the prosecutor offered the deal because forensic scientist Hong decided she could not support her earlier conclusion that McDermott’s DNA was found on the victim’s wrist.
Hasse accused Hong of altering her analysis to show the DNA belonged to McDermott when the data revealed that it was not him or, at the most, was inconclusive.
‘Cooked the books’
“She cooked the books,” Hasse said. “She got rid of all the red flags so she could only use the markers that identified him.”
Hasse explained that Hong, in her original analysis, disregarded genetic markers that would have shown the DNA on the victim’s wrist did not belong to McDermott.
Suzanna Ryan, a Carlsbad-based forensic consultant hired by the defense, added: “She did what you’re not supposed to do … make the data fit the reference sample” taken from McDermott.
“The other big deal is she never had the interpretation reviewed,” Ryan said, describing that as standard procedure.
District Attorney Todd Spitzer said the office is looking at all the active cases in which Hong testified or is the DNA case agent to “ensure the integrity of that testimony and/or opinions.”
“The mission of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office is not to get convictions at all costs; it is to carefully and methodically evaluate and reevaluate each case to ensure justice is served,” Spitzer said.
Former cases called into question
Hong formerly worked for the Orange County Crime Lab and now is at the California Department of Justice. It is not the first time that her work has been called into question.
Two other Orange County murder cases were appealed based on the suspicion that Hong and other lab workers tailored their testimony to benefit the prosecution. Both are cold cases from the mid-1980s that were believed to have been solved in the late 2000s.
In 1985, then Orange County criminalist Daniel Gammie concluded that semen found in a murder victim had not been deposited close to the time of her death, meaning she probably was not killed by the donor.
About 20 years later, the semen was tied to Lynn Dean Johnson, who then was charged in the killing. Called to the witness stand, Gammie recanted his earlier testimony and said he now believed the semen could have been deposited near the time of death, which would incriminate Johnson. Gammie’s then-supervisor, Hong, also testified to the same.
Hong later testified in another cold case with similar sperm samples that the semen could not have been deposited around the time of death, attorneys said. Her testimony in that case allowed prosecutors to focus on suspect Wendell Lemond.
Johnson’s attorneys used Hong and Gammie’s alleged “flip flop” to avoid the death penalty. Lemond is in the midst of appeal.
Orange County lab officials have said the semen samples studied by Hong in the Lemond and Johnson cases were different enough to warrant the conflicting testimony.
Hasse has an alternate view.
“She has a history,” Hasse said. “She just asks the D.A. what they need and then cooks the books accordingly.”
Buena Park cold case
McDermott was the main suspect in the death of Chandler, who was found by her stepfather, Thomas Patraw Sr., strangled in her bed on Jan. 11, 1988. There were no signs of forced entry.
The case quickly went cold, but McDermott was later arrested in December 2012, based mostly on the DNA evidence. McDermott had sex with the victim a day before she was slain, Hasse said.
Hasse called McDermott’s release bittersweet because he had to plead guilty to killing Chandler to win his freedom. His first trial in 2016 ended in a hung jury. McDermott decided not to roll the dice on another jury.
“It was a gut-wrenching decision to plea him,” McDermott said. “I felt strongly there was so much reasonable doubt in this case.”
Hong did not return an email seeking comment.
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