SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors can introduce controversial DNA evidence in an ongoing Scottsdale murder case.
Ian Mitcham has had pending charges in the 2015 death of Allison Feldman and the case's been tied up over a dispute regarding how police obtained DNA evidence to link Mitcham to the crime.
Police identified Mitcham as a suspect after DNA collected from the murder scene showed a familial match to a DNA profile on record with Mitcham's brother. Police then learned a vial of Mitcham's blood was in law enforcement's possession from a 2015 DUI arrest.
Without obtaining a warrant, the police analyzed that blood in the vial and created Mitcham’s DNA profile, which allegedly matched with the unidentified DNA profile in the Feldman case.
A superior court previously ruled the DNA evidence could not be introduced because it was obtained without a warrant before sequencing that DNA profile.
On Tuesday, the state's supreme court reversed the previous decision and sent the case back to the superior court for further proceedings.
The supreme court recognized that the "police violated Mitcham’s Fourth Amendment rights by conducting a search beyond the scope of his consent," and yet concluded that the defendant's DNA profile would have been eventually discovered by investigators.
At the time of the illegal search in 2018, Mitcham was facing DUI charges unrelated to Feldman's death. Mitcham later pleaded guilty in that case in 2022, which would have resulted in Mitcham submitting a DNA sample that is entered into a law enforcement database.
"The State would have inevitably discovered Mitcham’s DNA profile despite the illegal search of the second vial of blood taken in 2015," the court's ruling states.
