POMONA – The trial for a convicted killer suspected in the death 23 years ago of a Hacienda Heights woman could start in early 2007, prosecutors said at a hearing Tuesday.
Wayne Harvey Smith is serving a life sentence for the Aug. 3, 1985, murder of Samedy Khiev of Norwalk.
Police last year linked DNA from Smith, 59, to evidence found at the site where Stacy Belcher was killed.
The 18-year-old woman was slain after leaving a Rowland Heights hotel room on Dec. 3, 1983, to buy food.
Tuesday, Smith’s attorneys attacked the credibility of the DNA, suggesting it could be a wrong match. The evidence is the only thing that ties him to the crime, they said.
Pomona Superior Court Judge Thomas Falls denied the defense’s request to get access to the offender database to ascertain if there was a faulty match.
“When you have an offender database, what is the likelihood you have coincidental match?” asked defense DNA expert Lesley Gordon. “There’s nothing else that ties this man to the case, except the DNA.”
The state database contains close to 500,000 offender profiles, said Deputy Attorney General Michael Chamberlain of the state Attorney General’s Office. The information is collected from felons of violent crimes, he said.
“There is no one else in the database that matches the DNA in this case,” Chamberlain said.
The database has proven effective in getting cold hits, which is when the DNA on the database matches DNA found in unsolved crimes, he said. There are nearly 150 cold hits a month.
Chamberlain said providing Smith’s attorneys database information on all offenders is a violation of privacy rights.
The next court hearing is scheduled for Nov. 7, the judge said, when they will discuss a possible sentence agreement proposed by the defense.
“We will argue to dismiss the agreement,” Deputy District Attorney Cathryn Brougham said. The trial should begin within 60days after Nov. 7, she said.
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