State v. Tye

The trial court erred in excluding DNA analysis of blood samples retrieved from the defendant's shoes since the blood was plainly visible from where the officer stood on the defendant's porch.

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The State appeals from the Superior Court of Fulton County’s order granting Clarence Tye’s motion to suppress the results of DNA analysis done on blood samples retrieved from Tye’s shoes; the trial court determined that, when an investigating detective asked Tye for the bloody shoes she saw in plain view on Tye’s feet, Tye did not knowingly and voluntarily consent to give them to the detective. This case comes to us in an unusual factual and procedural posture which requires thorough examination in order to resolve what would appear at first blush to be a straightforward if such term of expediency can be used in matters legal “substantial basis” analysis.1 Upon the execution of such examination and for the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgment of the court below.

The record shows that, on January 30, 1996, Stephanie Black was found dead in her residence located at 1201 Milton Terrace in Atlanta; she was killed between approximately 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. and was discovered at 10:15 a.m. by her boyfriend, who had just come from work. Ms. Black had been stabbed with a knife over 120 times. The lead officer on the scene, Investigator M. B. Griffith, testified that “there was an extremely large amount of blood. . . . A tremendous amount of blood. . . . Blood was on the wall, it was on the mirror, it was on the door.” At the bind-over hearing, upon viewing photographs of the crime scene, the magistrate court noted, “It wasn’t just a stabbing; it was a multiple slash wound attack, and it spilled a tremendous amount of . . . There are stabs on the hand, there are stabs on the leg, there are stabs on the back. And as a result of these stabs, there’s multiple blood splatterings all over the room.” Because of such, Investigator Griffith had concluded that “it was obvious that whoever was responsible for this could not have gotten out of there without some blood being on them.”

State v. Tye

The trial court erred in excluding DNA analysis of blood samples retrieved from the defendant's shoes since the blood was plainly visible from where the officer stood on the defendant's porch.

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