Dog-scent evidence won't be presented in Dyleski trial

[bigdoglover]

San Francisco Chronicle

Henry K. Lee

A Contra Costa County prosecutor said today that he does not intend to introduce dog-scent evidence in the upcoming murder trial of Lafayette teen Scott Dyleski.

Dyleski, 17, has pleaded not guilty to charges of special-circumstances murder and burglary in the Oct. 15 slaying of Pamela Vitale, 52, the wife of lawyer and legal analyst Daniel Horowitz. Horowitz found his wife dead inside a mobile home not far from where they were building a home in Lafayette.

In the investigation into Vitale's killing, authorities used dogs to track the scent of her killer.

In a three-page filing today in Contra Costa Superior Court, prosecutor Harold Jewett acknowledged that sheriff's officials moved "substantial evidence containing the biological fluids of both defendant and Pamela Vitale" to Dyleski's home before the dogs were brought there.

As such, prosecutors "cannot say this action did not contribute to the reactions by the K-9" and do not intend to introduce dog-scent evidence at trial, Jewett wrote.

Investigators focused on Dyleski after neighbors said he used their credit-card information to order marijuana-growing equipment and billed the orders to neighborhood addresses. If convicted, Dyleski, who is being prosecuted as an adult, could face life in prison.

Dyleski's attorney, Contra Costa Deputy Public Defender Ellen Leonida, argued in court papers filed earlier against the use of dog-scent evidence.

Leonida wrote that search dogs were "unable to reach a consensus regarding the location of the perpetrator's odor" due to the "immense amount of human interference with the evidence."

"In this case, the dogs were not brought in until almost a week after the crime, after the evidence had been collected and removed from the crime scene by human hands, each presumably carrying its own odor," Leonida wrote.

The attorney also asked Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga to suppress evidence from a search of Dyleski's home on the grounds of "reckless, if not outright dishonest" statements made in investigators' affidavits that lacked probable cause.

Dog-scent evidence has been allowed in other cases, including in the Scott Peterson murder trial, where jurors heard tesimony that a search dog sniffed Laci Peterson's scent at the end of a pier on the Berkeley Marina.

The dog-scent and search-warrant issues will be discussed at hearings later this month. Dyleski is scheduled to go to trial in Martinez on July 17.

The attorneys in the Dyleski case are prohibited from commenting beyond the court filings because of a gag order, which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to lift today at the request of Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred.

Allred, who represents Dyleski's girlfriend, said today she believed she had a First Amendment right to "criticize police and prosecutorial conduct involving my client. I believe it sets a dangerous precedent for other lawyers and litigants who want to and need to speak about the justice system.''