High Court denies Lane
By Melinda Harrell
Published in News on March 4, 2018 3:05 AM
The North Carolina Supreme Court has ruled against convicted murderer Eric Glenn Lane's appeal to allow for DNA testing of evidence in the 2002 slaying of 5-year-old Precious Ebony Whitfield.
Lane was convicted in 2005 of the kidnapping, rape and murder of Whitfield and is on death row for the crimes.
In the Friday ruling, the court rejected Lane's request to test previously untested hair samples, concluding that there was "no reasonable probability that the verdict would have been more favorable to (the) defendant if the testing had been conducted."
The decision was based, in part, on the May 2015 post-conviction DNA testing results of swabs taken from the victim's body and Lane.
The results, which were announced in open court, matched Lane's to the victim's.
It was shortly after the DNA results were announced that Lane filed a new motion for post-conviction DNA testing of hair samples that were not previously evaluated during his trial.
In June of 2015, the trial court ruled that testing the hair samples was not material to the case, which was subsequently appealed to the state's highest court. On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court's ruling.
The court also considered the facts of the case and the overwhelming evidence that led to Lane's conviction in its rejection of his arguments.
Lane's defense argued that the 2015 DNA results implicate Lane in the rape of the victim, but did not prove that he had murdered her, thus suggesting someone else's involvement in the murder.
The court rejected this defense.
"...we conclude that the additional overwhelming evidence of (the) defendant's guilt presented at trial, the dearth of evidence pointing (to) a second perpetrator, and the inability of forensic testing to determine whether the hair samples at issue are relevant to establish a third party was involved in these crimes together create an insurmountable hurdle to success of (the) defendant's materiality argument."
The court also highlighted that, in Lane's written confession, there was no mention of an accomplice.