The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss a petition seeking scientific testing of evidence in a 2005 criminal case in which a man was convicted of breaking into a woman's home and raping her.
Danny Lee Hooper, 46, is serving a 110-year sentence at the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Marianna.
Writing for the court's majority, Justice Rhonda Wood said Hooper's pro se petition to the Washington County Circuit Court failed to state facts that would entitle him to scientific testing.
Fayetteville police charged Hooper with three courts of rape and one count each of kidnapping, robbery, residential burglary and second-degree battery after the state Crime Laboratory told investigators that his DNA matched evidence found at the crime scene, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported at the time.
In his defense, Hooper testified he was drunk and entered the woman's house to steal money.
The state's high court has previously rejected multiple claims from Hooper for post-conviction relief, including a petition claiming he was incompetent at the time of the trial, Wood wrote. A psychiatrist had examined him before the trial and concluded he had the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct.
In his petitions to the Washington County Circuit Court, Hooper claimed there was new evidence in the form of records describing his previous mental-health diagnoses and argued for additional, independent DNA testing, alleging that the state failed to present evidence at trial establishing that it had reliably gathered and maintained the DNA swabs taken from the victim. Hooper also said the victim failed to identify him during the trial.
Wood wrote that under state law, the petition must, among other things, identify the defense theory on actual innocence that the requested testing would establish. Because Hooper admitted to the rape at the time of the trial, there is no reason to do the testing, she wrote.
The option also states that Hooper knew about his mental-health records at the time of trial.