COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court declined Wednesday to take the appeal of a former Akron police captain fighting a lower-court ruling that reinstated his conviction for killing his ex-wife.
The court ruled against hearing the case of Douglas Prade, who was imprisoned for 15 years for the slaying before a judge ordered him released last year on the basis of bite-mark DNA testing.
It was not immediately clear what the next step is for Prade, including whether he must return to prison. Messages were left with his attorneys and for the Summit County Prosecutor’s office in Akron.
Prade, 68, was released in January 2013, after Summit County Judge Judy Hunter decided there was convincing evidence of his innocence after DNA tests of the bite mark on Dr. Margo Prade’s lab coat showed the DNA did not match that of her former husband.
On March 19, Ohio’s 9th District Court of Appeals said the DNA testing only raised more questions than answers and Prade’s original conviction was based on overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
“The only absolute conclusion that can be drawn from the DNA results, however, is that their true meaning will never be known,” the 71-page appeals court ruling said.
Prade was briefly returned to jail after the ruling, then freed after the state Supreme Court granted his request to temporarily block the appeals court ruling.
Prade was convicted in 1998 of shooting his 41-year-old ex-wife, a family practitioner, inside her van at the parking lot of her Akron office. There were no witnesses and no fingerprints, and no gun was found after the 1997 shooting.
A test of the lab coat fabric showed it contained at least two and as many as five DNA profiles and none matched the former police captain’s DNA.
A Summit County assistant prosecutor told the appeals court in August that the findings showed a possibility that the bite mark evidence was contaminated, perhaps before Prade was convicted and sentenced.
Prade’s attorney said at the August hearing that new tests based on improved technology found only that the DNA came from a male, but not Prade.
Prade filed a lawsuit in federal court this year against current and former police officers, claiming he was framed.
He said after his release he wanted to spend time with grandchildren he had never met and work with the Ohio Innocence Project, the group that helped free him, on cases of wrongfully convicted inmates.
