Legal challenge mounted in deer DNA case
A Uniontown man serving a life sentence for shooting to death a fellow hunter in 1997 wants a federal judge to overturn his conviction.
Lawrence J. Cseripko, 65, contended that his trial and appellate attorneys should have challenged the deer DNA that was used to link him to the death of Paul Horvat.
In an appeal he filed on his own behalf, Cseripko maintained his attorneys should have challenged the “junk science of deer meat DNA.” He wrote in his motion that the DNA “was used to bolster a non-existent case (and) has never been validated in Pennsylvania courts and has never been scientifically evaluated in the deer population in the area where the murder took place, or for that matter, anywhere else.”
In a groundbreaking case, prosecutors created a database of deer DNA from local deer. They used that to match DNA from an entrail pile, deer flesh and blood at the Menallen Township area where Horvat’s body was found to deer steaks and chops found in a freezer at Cseripko’s home.
Cseripko was charged in Horvat’s death several years after it occurred, and convicted in 2005.
However, police seized the meat from Cseripko’s freezer in 1998, and as advances in DNA occurred, they built a database of samples of deer from the Menallen Township area. Those samples, the meat from Cseripko’s freezer and samples of the entrails, flesh and blood near Horvat’s body were sent to a lab.
A statistician determined that it was 47,000 times more likely that the meat in Cseripko’s freezer and the samples taken from the area of Horvat’s body were from the same deer than from different deer.
Prosecutors had argued that Horvat shot and gutted the deer, and as he dragged the animal toward his tree stand, Cseripko came upon him and shot him in the back. The men had a run-in during the previous year’s hunting season, and one of the witnesses testified that Cseripko said he would kill Horvat if he ever saw him again.
Cseripko’s trial attorney, Lisa Middleman, argued that all the DNA proved was that Cseripko stole Horvat’s deer.
Cseripko argued in his latest appeal that there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
“The state could only prove that (Cseripko) was in the vicinity of the crime and that he and the victim had, on prior occasions, had arguments over hunting territory. Other hunters in the area of the murder had the same opportunity and motivation to commit the crime and (Cseripko) was charged and convicted only on suspicions and the possibility of guilt, which is constitutionally inadequate,” he wrote.
He noted that there were no witnesses to the murder and that police could not find the gun used to kill Horvat.
Cseripko also contended that Middleman should have put him on the stand to testify in his own behalf and should have called character witnesses.
“Had he testified at his own trial, he would have maintained his innocence, the importance of which cannot be overstated in the eyes of a jury,” Cseripko wrote.
A filing indicated Middleman told him a prior conviction for carrying a concealed weapon could be used against him if he testified. However, Cseripko wrote, that conviction could not have been used because only certain crimes of falsehood can be used to impeach a witness.
He maintained that the errors in his trial should cumulatively be used to get him a new trial.