Two Cold Cases Cracked Thanks to DNA Evidence

A Virginia inmate has pleaded guilty  to a 1993 sexual assault on Manhattan’s Lower East Side after his DNA was matched last year to a sample taken more than 17 years ago, Manhattan prosecutors said.

Alberto Barriera, who is serving a seven-year sentence in Virginia on state narcotics charges, admitted to rape in the first degree and  is expected to be sentenced to 10 years to 20 years in prison later this month. He will serve his sentence in New York after completing his Virginia prison term.

What makes the case particularly interesting is that his DNA sample was entered into a national database by Virgina officials last year after his conviction there and matched to the New York case in March 2010.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the case highlights the need for DNA to be collected from all persons convicted under New York’s penal laws. Barriera might have been identified earlier if that was the case: he was convicted of misdemeanors in New York in 1999 and in 2004, Vance said.

“If New York State law had been amended to include DNA collection upon all convictions, this case would have been solved years earlier,” Vance said. It is our hope that today’s conviction brings a measure of closure to the woman who survived this attack, and assurance to victims still waiting that we will pursue these cases for as long as it takes to bring justice.”

Prosecutors had alleged that Barriera attacked a 16-year-old when she returned to her home on the Lower East Side in December 1993, robbing, violently choking and sexually assaulting her. A rape kit was prepared after the incident, but not analyzed until 2002. A grand jury indicted him as a “John Doe,” based on the DNA profile, in 2003 before the 10-year statute of limitations expired, Vance said.

A lawyer for Barriera didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Incredibly, there is another case in the news today involving similar facts.

Police investigators in Illinois were able to use DNA evidence on a bedspread used by a woman raped and murdered in 1976 to apprehend an inmate, already in prison on another murder charge, the Chicago Tribune reports, noting that the inmate told a judge that he would plead guilty to the 1976 crime.