In 1993, Sophie Sergie was sexually assaulted and murdered, her body found in a second-floor bathroom in Bartlett Hall at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.
Thirty-two years later, the man found guilty of the crime is appealing his conviction.
Steven Downs, 50, is currently serving a 75-year prison sentence for Sergie’s murder, handed down in September 2022, following a guilty verdict the previous February.
For 25 years, the crime remained unsolved, until in 2018, when DNA evidence found at the scene of the crime was linked with DNA submitted by a family member of Downs to a genealogy website.
Downs had attended UAF between 1992 and 1996, and lived one floor above where the body was found at the time of the murder.
He attended telephonically at the Anchorage appeal on Monday, April 21, at 11 a.m.
Downs’ lawyer is Assistant Public Defender Emily Jura, and Diane Wendlandt is representing the State of Alaska.
Jura argued that the method investigators used in searching a genealogy database for a connection to the DNA found at the scene — a technique which was used in Downs’ conviction — should have constitutional oversight.
She said the genetic connection established between Downs and his family member — including the specific locations of certain genetic markers — was private information, because Downs had not volunteered his DNA for the genealogy database.
“As our Supreme Court said in Glass, ‘The right to privacy includes the right for people to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about themselves is communicated to others,’ and that includes, certainly, sensitive information, such as whether a person’s been adopted, or is predisposed to certain diseases,” Jura added.
Law enforcement’s use of this technology, she argued, is at odds with “Alaska’s expectation of a free society.”
“This is a singular investigative technique that is novel, and that we are all trying to gain purchase on, and in particular, ultimately, this court has to balance the utility of the investigative technique with the threat to our security and privacy,” Jura said.
Wendlandt began her argument by briefly tracing the course of the investigation and trial of Downs, including a roommate’s testimony that at the time of the murder, Downs had a gun with a make and model consistent with the bullet found in the victim.
She argued that “there was nothing unconstitutional about the state’s use of genetic genealogy” in its investigation.
According to Wendlandt, the process used did not violate Downs’ privacy because the DNA submitted to the genealogy website was obtained from inside the victim at a crime scene, where “there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Jura further discussed a 2009 call to Alaska State Troopers in which Karen Moto reported that her brother Kenneth had, in the fall of 1993, confessed to raping and murdering Sergie.
“Her report was not led or forced. It was never recanted. It was recorded and transcribed, and it was made to the law enforcement officers who were investigating this case, and who would have been expected to follow up on this report.”
Kenneth denied involvement in Sergie’s murder, and Karen had died by the time of the 2018 trial.
The trial court’s decision that this evidence did not meet the requirement of trustworthiness, Jura said, “was error, and it rose to the level of violating Mr. Downs’ right to due process as it excluded critical evidence based on credibility concerns that should have been left to the jury to resolve.”
Wendlandt called the trial court’s exclusion of Kenneth Moto’s reported confession proper, saying Moto had previously submitted to DNA testing before being excluded.
“Alaska, like every other jurisdiction, excludes hearsay unless it fits within a recognized exception, or it has sufficient circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness. These statements, Karen’s statements, did not fit within a recognized exception. Therefore, the question here was whether or not there was sufficient circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness that would allow the introduction of this evidence,” Wendlandt said.
Pointing out the 16 years that had elapsed between the murder and Karen’s report, and previous false statements she had made to law enforcement in the past, Wendlandt further argued that Karen had a motive to falsely accuse her brother.
It is unclear when the court will rule on the appeal.
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