In his ruling, Hein, a retired Darke County judge, agreed with the defense’s arguments that multiple pieces of evidence used to identify Myers and determine time of death, including hair microscopy and fingermark analysis, were scientifically unreliable, and that new DNA analysis excluding Myers as the source of male DNA on multiple objects from the scene might change a jurist’s mind.
Hein vacated Myers’ conviction and ordered a new trial to take place, court documents said.
Greene County Prosecutor David Hayes said the court’s decision will be appealed.
“While we respect the court’s decision, we are deeply disappointed and disagree with the granting of a new trial in this case in addition to the court’s decision to vacate the conviction,” Hayes said. “Our appellate counsel is reviewing the decisions and preparing an appeal. We will be appealing both of the court’s decisions to the Second District Court of Appeals.”
Myers’ lead attorney, Elizabeth Smith of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, said better science was key to the result.
“Given scientific advancements over the past three decades, the court correctly concluded that Mr. Myers was materially prejudiced by what we now know to be unreliable junk science used to convict him,” Smith said.
In his conclusion, Judge Jonathan P. Hein wrote that there is “clear and convincing evidence” that the jury may have given a different verdict had “errors not permeated the trial.”
At the time of the trial, analysis of a single pubic hair found at the crime scene, using a technique called microscopy, placed Myers at the scene of the murder. The hair was one of the key pieces of evidence used to convict Myers. The hair was destroyed as part of the analysis process during the trial in 1996.
The analysis at the time of trial was “fundamentally flawed,” Hein said, adding that there was no reliable scientific data on which to identify Myers using the hair.
“The use of microscopy alone as forensic evidence of identity is virtually extinct today,” Hein said. “Hair microscopy evidence wrongly deprived the defendant of his trial, defense and alibi.”
The marks of the perpetrator’s fingernails around Maher’s neck was another key piece of evidence in the first trial. Similarly, there was no scientific basis for the use of finger mark analysis to identify a perpetrator, Hein said.
The recent DNA analysis on rocks and the railroad spike used in the murder, which exclude Myers as a possible source of male DNA on the murder weapons, also indicate that Myers was “deprived of substantive due process” during his trial in 1996, Hein said.
“Any use of any category of unreliable evidence causes serious question about the accuracy of the verdict,” Hein said. “As more unreliable evidence is added, the accuracy of the verdict increasingly become questionable.”
Smith, Myers’ attorney, said he never confessed to the crime.
“The case against him was wholly circumstantial,” she said.
Lawyers for Myers had argued the state of Ohio’s case relied on “unreliable and faulty forensic science to obtain Myers’ conviction.”
The state argued that no “reasonable factfinder” would have found Myers not guilty or ineligible for the death penalty, saying that Myers was the last person seen with Maher, had her wallet, confessed to the murder to fellow inmates and had motive to commit the crime.
Maher, who was 18 and had one young child, was found nearly dead near railroad tracks on the south side of Xenia around 3 a.m. on Aug. 4, 1988, reports said. She had been strangled, and a railroad spike had been driven through her temple. She died shortly after while being flown to the hospital.
She had been out drinking with her boyfriend, Glenn Smith, and with Myers, who was then 23 years old.
Smith was arrested at one of the bars just after 1 a.m. A police officer said that soon after, he saw Myers walking with Maher up Home Avenue in the direction of the tracks. Myers was arrested with both Maher’s and Smith’s wallets in his possession and charged days later, records said.
By 1991, three years after the killing, Myers hadn’t been prosecuted and charges were dropped. Then in 1993, Myers was re-indicted for murder after serving time for a separate forgery conviction. After multiple delays, Myers was found guilty in 1996, and the jury recommended the death penalty.
