Syracuse, NY -- New DNA testing has thrown yet another wrench into an upcoming suburban murder trial: a Lakeland man is accused of stabbing a Liverpool man to death and leaving him stuffed in the victim’s own trunk outside a Clay apartment complex.
But the geography of Jacob Giarrusso’s bizarre murder isn’t the only thing all over the map. So are the DNA results from the murder weapon.
Far from providing clear-cut proof of guilt or innocence, the DNA in this case has, so far, led mainly to even more questions.
It’s delayed the murder trial for months -- after the first DNA results led to a second round of testing -- and is now the subject of a push to dismiss the murder indictment all together.
The bottom line: neither side agrees on what the DNA on the murder weapon actually proves -- if anything.
Defense lawyer Ed Klein is hoping to get the case thrown out based on the new DNA testing.
Prosecutor Robert Moran is still planning on going to trial, presumably believing the latest DNA evidence fits his theory of the murder.
First, some background.
Giarrusso, 25, disappeared from his grandmother’s house on Sunflower Drive the night of Nov. 18, 2017. When a deputy first arrived, he immediately noticed chili thrown across the living room floor. But Giarrusso’s grandmother still hoped he would come home. The deputy left.
A day later, the same deputy returned. Now, the chili had been cleaned up, revealing a pool of blood on the floor. There was a broken vase in the kitchen. And one of the knives had disappeared from a knife block.
Two days later, Giarrusso’s body was found in the trunk of his own car in an apartment complex off Morgan Road in Clay. He had been beaten with a “blunt object” and stabbed with a kitchen knife before being stuffed in the trunk, authorities said.
Jacob Stanton, 24, has admitted travelling in Giarrusso’s car the night of his disappearance. And his DNA is almost certainly on the steering wheel.
But that’s about all the DNA has proven so far, argued Klein, the defense lawyer.
Yes, Klein acknowledged, there was a stain of apparent blood on the steering wheel where Stanton’s DNA was found. But, Klein contended, there was no scientific proof that the blood belonged to Stanton.
Stanton admitted in grand jury to driving Giarrusso’s car that night. So his DNA would be on the steering wheel. The blood could have come later, Klein argued. Stanton says Giarrusso eventually dropped him off at home and Stanton last saw the soon-to-be murder victim driving away.
Pretty straightforward so far. But there’s more DNA evidence -- on the murder weapon itself.
The kitchen knife was found in the trunk with Giarrusso at the Clay apartment complex. The broken-off knife handle was found in the trunk, too. And there was DNA on the knife handle.
Here’s where things get very complicated.
Two DNA swabs were taken of the knife handle, according to lab results provided to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.
The first swab was tested months ago using traditional DNA techniques. The results showed DNA linked to at least two people, with Stanton being more than 6,600 times more likely than a random person to be one of the contributors. The other contributor appeared almost certainly to be Giarrusso.
Sounds pretty good for the prosecution, so far.
But there were questions as to how many contributors there were to the first DNA sample. It could have been two -- or more. And that left open the possibility of other, unknown people involved.
So Stanton’s trial was delayed this summer as the lab tested the second swab from the knife handle. And that swab offered significantly different results.
The second swab indicated for certain that there were only two DNA contributors on the handle. But, unlike the first swab, it couldn’t point to whether Stanton was one of those people. (The second swab did confirm Giarrusso was almost certainly one of the two contributors.)
The differing results between swabs led the crime lab to do even more DNA testing. And those tests led to even more confusion.
Under the additional DNA test, called Y-STR, the two swabs produced yet more unique results, according to the lab report.
Y-STR testing of the first swab only identified a single DNA contributor, despite the previous test that had shown at least two contributors. That single contributor was almost certainly the victim.
In other words, Stanton was ruled out as the contributor on the first swab, using Y-STR testing.
The second swab was also tested using Y-STR. That swab did find two contributors, with Giarrusso again being one of them. But the other contributor could not be determined due to the small sample size, the report concluded.
Again, Stanton was ruled out as the major contributor on the second swab. There was no way to say who the other contributor was.
What’s not clear from the report itself is which of the multiple test results is considered most accurate. However, the report doesn’t necessarily suggest the results contradict one another.
It’s possible that the traditional test on the first swab -- showing Stanton’s DNA on the knife handle -- could be accurate if the Y-STR simply didn’t pick up the second contributor due to degradation of the sample or the technology used in the second test. After all, three of the four tests, involving both swabs and both DNA techniques, showed at least two contributors.
That leaves a path for prosecutors to argue the DNA testing actually pointed toward Stanton’s DNA being on the knife. At the very least, that interpretation wouldn’t exclude him.
But Klein, the defense lawyer, argued that the conflicting results end up showing that Stanton did not touch the murder weapon at all.
The report’s language lends itself to that interpretation: “Jacob Stanton...(is) excluded as possible sources of the male DNA obtained from the first and second swabs from the knife handle," it concludes.
Klein argued that means that grand jury testimony connecting Stanton’s DNA to the murder weapon was “totally false.” He asked a judge to dismiss the indictment based on the new DNA evidence.
The grand jury, he argued, had been unfairly swayed by DNA’s “mystical aura of definitiveness" linking Stanton to the knife handle. That link, he argued, turned out to be wrong.
Arguments for the dismissal will be held in court Oct. 25.
Prosecutor Moran said he could not discuss a case headed to trial. Stanton remains jailed until his trial next month.