Matter of Dabbs v. Vergari

Matter of Dabbs v. Vergari, 149 Misc. 2d 844 [1990] decided almost four years prior to the addition of CPL 440.30 (1-a) to the postjudgment relief provisions of article 440 of the Criminal Procedure Law, clearly based its ultimate determination, the granting of an order directing testing of certain items containing DNA evidence, upon the establishment by the defendant of a reasonable probability that a different result would have obtained had disclosure been made to the defense. In that case, the court opined that the victim's panties, a gauze pad and rape test slides had "high exculpatory potential," since, assuming the truth of the victim's sexual history, i.e., her testimony that she had no sexual relations with anyone else for at least 24 hours prior to the attack, any semen taken from the victim could only belong to her attacker. Under such circumstances, exclusion by DNA test results of the defendant as the depositor of the semen would have strongly impeached the credibility of the victim's identification of the defendant (id.).