On January 12, 2010, at 7:30 in the morning, Alicia Hernandez, a 22-year-old domestic worker, was walking to work when she was attacked on Four Corners Road on Staten Island, New York.
Hernandez described her attacker as a slim Hispanic man wearing a black hoodie pulled over his head and blue jeans. He had a mustache and appeared to be around 5'5" or shorter. She said the man approached her from behind. He covered her face with her scarf, telling her in Spanish to be quiet. He pulled her about 15 feet towards a wooded area and fell on top of her holding a 6-to-7-inch knife. He started to rub her thighs and opened her jacket. She said she would do whatever he wanted if she was allowed to stand up. She offered him her handbag. When she was eventually able to stand, she pushed him and ran. She begged a passing motorist for help. She was provided a ride and dropped off at a school. Police then arrived.
Based on Hernandez’s description, on January 17, 2010, Detective George Lopez initially reported the victim’s assailant at approximately 5'5" weighing between 130 and 170 pounds. He later created a Crime Stoppers reward poster modifying this description, listing the height between 5'3" to 5'8," but narrowing the weight range to 140 to 170 pounds.
Authorities collected evidence at the scene, including material found on Hernandez’s clothing. A swab of Hernandez’s right glove contained approximately 300 picograms of DNA, while a swab of her left glove produced only 90 picograms. A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram.
DNA amounts under 200 picograms are considered low copy number (LCN), which can cause issues like missing genetic markers or “stochastic effects,” that arise from sampling errors that occur when very small samples are tested.
The New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner's (OCME) use of LCN would later be criticized and found to have contributed to the wrongful conviction of Mayer Herskovic.
In a report on April 20, 2010, OCME scientist Dr. Craig O’Connor reported that the fabric scrapings from the exterior of the left glove were a mixture of DNA from at least three individuals, with the major contributor being Hernandez herself.
O’Connor’s report also concluded that fabric scrapings from the exterior of the right glove contained a DNA mixture from at least three people, including one male. Hernandez was identified as a possible major contributor. The report stated that the major male profile (Male Donor A) would occur in fewer than 1 in a trillion individuals.
By December 23, 2010, Detective Lopez had closed his investigation after determining that all available leads had been exhausted. Despite this, the police preserved the DNA in hopes of a future match. The case would remain unsolved for more than two years.
In May 2011, Alexis Rodriguez, 26, was arrested in connection with a burglary, which involved elements of sexual abuse. Rodriguez had previously served approximately two and a half years in prison for a 2006 conviction involving attempted robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. In June 2011, Rodriguez was convicted of burglary and sentenced to a two-and-a-half to five-year prison sentence, and a sample of his DNA was entered into a police database.
At the time, no connection was made between Rodriguez and the Hernandez case. His arrest record listed his height as between 6’1” and 6’3”, and his weight as 170 pounds.
On August 12, 2011, the DNA recovered from Hernandez’s right glove was run through state and federal DNA databases and “hit” on Rodriguez’s profile in the state DNA index.
On July 13, 2012, a detective presented Hernandez with a photo array that included a photograph of Rodriguez, whom she identified as her attacker. On August 15, Rodriguez was formally charged with attempted rape, attempted kidnapping, and criminal possession of a weapon. Hernandez was presented with a live lineup on September 24, 2012. She did not identify Rodriguez and instead pointed to a filler.
On February 11, 2013, O’Connor issued a six-page report on the DNA evidence. To “deconvolute” a DNA mixture, meaning to separate the individual DNA profiles within a sample that contains genetic material from multiple people, O’Connor used “probabilistic genotyping” software devised by the OCME, called the Forensic Statistical Tool (FST). “Probabilistic genotyping” is a statistical approach used in forensic DNA analysis to calculate the likelihood that a specific individual’s DNA is present in a complex or mixed sample. FST would later be criticized and its use discontinued.
O’Connor concluded that the DNA on the left glove was from a three-person mixture and that the evidence, “is approximately 1.69 times more probable if the sample originated from [Rodriguez, Hernandez], and one unknown, unrelated person than if it originated from [Hernandez], and two unknown, unrelated persons.”
He concluded that the unknown portion of the DNA recovered from the left glove was “at best, ‘possibly’” Rodriguez’s DNA.
In O’Connor’s report about the DNA recovered from the right glove, he concluded that “the DNA results are consistent with those of Male Donor A. Therefore, [Rodriguez] could be the source of that DNA. The DNA profile of Male Donor A is expected to be found in approximately 1 in 2.00 trillion people.”
Before trial, Rodriguez’s defense attorney, Manuel Ortega contacted Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, a DNA expert and Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about providing expert testimony at trial, but he did not retain or further consult Kobilinsky.
Trial began in January of 2014.
O’Connor testified about the DNA evidence. Contrary to what he had written in his report, he said that the defendant “was” the source of the DNA recovered from the right glove.
Ortega attempted to impeach Dr. O’Connor during cross-examination, using his personal understanding of DNA evidence. Ortega questioned O’Connor about the inconsistency made between his initial report and the testimony he had just given.
Ortega asked, “You stated earlier, Doctor, in your opinion he’s the source but on your report it says, ‘could be the source?’... Can you explain that distinction for us?”
O’Connor replied that the report was, “based on laboratory protocols… There is a certain threshold of statistics that we have to meet in order for us to say in the report that they are the source of the profile. But as an analyst I can use my discretion to say my opinion, whether or not I think they are also the source.” Ortega asked what O’Connor’s opinion was based on, and he responded, “My experience and knowledge of doing DNA tests and what the results were.” O’Connor’s testimony was the only evidence identifying the defendant during the trial.
The jury began deliberations at 2:00 p.m. on January 23, 2014.
At 3:00 p.m., the jury sent its only note to the judge asking for some of the exhibits presented during trial but did not ask for any of the OCME files relating to the DNA evidence.
At 3:34 p.m., the jury found Rodriguez guilty of attempted rape, attempted kidnapping, and possession of a weapon.
At sentencing on May 14, Rodriguez asserted his innocence, saying through a Spanish interpreter, “I never committed this crime. My mother, my father did not bring me up that way.” State Supreme Court Justice Robert J. Collini replied, “A jury found you guilty. Your DNA was found on the victim's clothing.” He sentenced Rodriguez to concurrent sentences of 15 years each for the attempted rape and kidnapping charges.
On January 14, 2015, Rodriguez’s case was assigned to Patricia Panzer of Appellate Advocates. Rodriguez appealed to the Appellate Division Court of Richmond County to vacate the conviction on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel.
In 2018, Panzer consulted with DNA experts Dr. Dan Krane, a Professor of Biological Sciences at Wright State University and the Chief Executive Officer of Forensic Bioinformatics, and Eric Carita, a forensic DNA consultant and owner of Ace Forensic Consulting Services.
On July 16, 2018, Krane wrote a report criticizing O’Connor’s 2013 report. Krane noted that amounts of DNA below 1,000 picograms “could introduce a suite of problems for DNA profiling” including stochastic effects, which he described as “results that are inaccurate, unreliable, and difficult to interpret.” Krane also noted “the test results for both runs of the right glove suggest that the sample was degraded and/or inhibited.”
Krane challenged O’Connor’s assumption that the DNA mixture on the left glove contained DNA from three individuals. Krane wrote that this assumption was itself based on a questionable assumption that allelic “drop-in” had occurred, while an “alternative is that the assumption that only three individuals contributed DNA to this sample (or that one of them could be Rodriguez) is incorrect.”
The possibility that the mixture contained DNA from more than three individuals was significant because, as Krane noted, FST was not validated for use on DNA mixtures of four or more individuals. Krane cited a study that found that “underestimating the number of contributors to a mixture can cause likelihood ratio approaches (such as FST) to overestimate the significance of failure to exclude an individual as a possible contributor to an evidence sample.”
Krane also argued that OCME had failed to take into consideration that Rodriguez had been identified as a suspect through the search of a large database, which introduced a risk of “ascertainment bias,” which can distort findings.
Finally, Krane noted that even if Rodriguez were a contributor to the DNA from the gloves, it could have come about through “secondary transfer”: “the test results for the left and right glove evidence samples in this case could be expected to yield the results that were observed if [Hernandez] had been wearing them when she came into contact with some item (such as a pole in a train car) that Rodriguez had previously touched.”
On April 21, 2020, the court ordered a hearing on the issue of ineffective counsel. Kobilinsky, Krane, and Carita testified. Krane and Carita testified that if defense counsel had consulted a DNA expert, they could have identified issues with O’Connor's transformation of his written conclusion that the defendant “could” have been the source of the DNA into his trial testimony that he “was” the source.
On May 24, 2021, the court vacated Rodriguez’s conviction and granted him a retrial due to ineffective assistance of counsel. “This case,” Judge William E Garnett wrote, “cried out for a thorough investigation of the DNA evidence with the assistance of an expert. This failure was egregious and potentially determinative of the defendant’s guilt.”
The court found that defense counsel did not consult with Kobilinsky about the DNA analysis material he received as discovery, nor did he consult about OMCE’s written conclusion in this case.
Given the failure to identify the defendant during the live lineup, an identification from a photo array that it had deemed “inadmissible,” and the lack of confidence in O’Connor’s written statement regarding the DNA, the court noted that the DNA evidence should have been scrutinized more thoroughly.
Ortega, Judge Garnett wrote, “had no fallback position if [O’Connor] embellished his conclusion as he did. If a defense expert had been retained, that expert would have been in a position to contest Dr. O'Connor’s trial conclusion. Instead when Dr. O'Connor opined that the defendant ‘was’ the attacker, defense counsel was left only with the glancing blow of a prior inconsistent statement.”
“Defense counsel's failure to engage with a DNA expert to scrutinize the OCME written conclusion,” Garnett wrote, “left Dr. O'Connor's, largely unchallenged, trial opinion stand without robust inquiry for the jury to consider.”
On January 7, 2022, the prosecution appealed the trial court’s decision to vacate the conviction. On December 28, 2022, the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s ruling, The prosecution appealed to the New York State Court of Appeals. On April 28, 2023, the Court of Appeals declined to review the case.
On November 3, 2023, the trial court accepted the prosecution’s motion to dismiss the case. Rodriguez remained in prison for his previous burglary conviction.
On August 19, 2026, Rodriguez filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against New York City and several OCME employees, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction.
⎯ Monica Bermudez, Sage Cerda, Ysa Ellison, Spencer Shoults, and Jennifer Vargas Villanueva
Posting Date: 07-30-2025
Last Update Date: 08-19-2026
