Special master shreds 'weak' murder conviction

By Scott Lauck
BridgeTower Media Newswires
 
ST. LOUIS, MO — A retired judge is recommending that the Missouri Supreme Court throw out a decades-old murder conviction for a Dent County man, finding “it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted” Donald “Doc” Nash of killing his girlfriend.

Nash is serving a de facto life sentence for the murder of his live-in girlfriend, Judy Spencer. Spencer was found strangled and shot near a vacant school outside of Salem in 1982. Nash was charged 26 years after her death based on trace amounts of Nash’s DNA under clippings of Spencer’s fingernails. He was convicted in 2009.

Nash, who will turn 78 in July, was sentenced to a minimum 50 years in prison before he can seek parole. He has consistently maintained his innocence — and retired St. Charles County Circuit Judge Richard Zerr quite nearly agrees.

In his June 12 report, Zerr — whom the Supreme Court appointed as a special master in October — found that Nash had established a “gateway” claim of actual innocence. Under that standard, a court that finds evidence of an inmate’s innocence can examine due process claims from the original trial that otherwise would be waived.

It’s not clear if the Supreme Court will hear further arguments in the case or simply address the report’s findings in an order, as it has done recently in two other wrongful-conviction cases. Last month, the high court overturned Lawrence Callanan’s conviction for a 1995 murder in St. Louis County, and in 2018 the court tossed the conviction of David Robinson for a 2000 murder in Sikeston.

In each case, the court didn’t formally exonerate the men but gave local prosecutors 30 days to decide whether to retry them. Both Callanan and Robinson were freed after prosecutors declined to pursue the cases.

Zerr’s recommendation similarly would give Dent County officials a chance to try Nash again, though his 222-page report found the case against Nash was “weak” and “suffers from numerous logical gaps.”

Among the new developments, a lab technician has recanted her key trial testimony. Spencer washed her hair on the night of her murder, which the technician said would have had a “great effect” on the amount of Nash’s DNA underneath her fingernails, implying that the presence of his DNA after the hair-washing meant the couple came into contact later that night.

Zerr found that the testimony not only was speculative but also was unsupported by any scientific studies and should not have been presented to the jury. The probative value of Spencer’s having traces of her live-in boyfriend’s DNA was the same as “the police finding a defendant’s fingerprints inside his own house,” Zerr wrote.

In addition, Nash’s legal team tested Spencer’s shoe, from which the laces were pulled to strangle her. It showed a male’s DNA that was inconsistent with either Nash or the trooper who bagged the shoe as evidence at the crime scene. Zerr said that evidence “could easily tip the balance” in favor of Nash’s acquittal had it been presented to a jury.