NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Defending a Yale lab technician charged with murder against forensic evidence might mean trying to convince jurors that the crime scene was contaminated because police didn't immediately shut down the lab where the victim was eventually found, legal experts said.
Raymond Clark III, 24, is charged with murder in the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le. She vanished from a research building in Yale's medical school complex onSept. 8; her body was found hidden in a wall recess five days later, on what was to be her wedding day.
Police charged Clark after reviewing some 300 pieces of evidence, including DNA samples taken from Clark a day before he was arrested. His bail was set at $3 million, and he did not enter a plea.
Officials reportedly found DNA from Le and Clark in the ceiling and in the recess where Le's body was found.
The evidence is so overwhelming that police believe they don't necessarily have to uncover Clark's motive for thekilling to convince jurors of his guilt, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
That likely leaves Clark's attorneys with going after how that evidence was gathered - rather than what it showed - and have prosecutors defend their decision not to seal the lab building until Le's body was found.
Yale students were allowed into the basement of the research building for at least three days after Le disappeared. The Hartford Courantreported that Clark was in the lab cleaning while police were conducting interviews shortly after the grad student disappeared and tried to hide labcleaning equipment that they later discovered contained blood spatters.
At the time, police said they were not sure whether the Le case was a homicide or a missing-persons case. The building wasn't sealed until Le's body was found and the case declared a homicide.
Information for this article was contributed from New Haven, Conn., by Susan Haigh of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/20/2009