A Massachusetts man serving a life sentence at the Maine State Prison for a 1994 rape and murder is seeking a new trial because his DNA was not found on the green sock stuffed into the victim’s mouth.
Foster Bates, 50, of Attleboro, Massachusetts, claims the new evidence raises reasonable doubt about his guilt and should be presented to a jury. Defense attorney, Rory McNamara of Berwick, argued that DNA from unknown males was found on the sock, tested in 2008, and there were at least three alternative suspects in the case.
The Maine attorney general’s office, which prosecutes homicide cases, disagreed. Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber said in his brief that a new trial was unnecessary because there was enough other evidence 15 years ago, including his semen found in the victim’s vagina, to convict Bates.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments in the case Thursday at Freeport High School during their annual fall road trip. The court will convene Friday at Mountain Valley High School and Oct. 25 at Westbrook High School.
A jury convicted Bates in July 2002 in Cumberland County Superior Court of murder and gross sexual assault in the February 1994 death of his neighbor Tammy Dickson, 22, of South Portland, the briefs said. He was charged with the crimes in 2001 after more advanced technology enabled investigators to match DNA found on Dickson’s body to Bates’ blood sample, which was taken around the time of the slaying, according to the Associated Press.
Bates testified at the trial that in 1991 he moved to Maine from Taunton, Massachusetts, to play basketball at the University of Southern Maine. He transferred to Southern Maine Technical College the following year and enrolled in the criminal justice technology program.
He told the jury that he hired Dickson, his upstairs neighbor, to watch his baby while he was at school and his wife was hospitalized, the Associated Press reported.
Within a few weeks, Bates testified, he and Dickson began having an affair.
Initially, Bates denied having sex with Dickson but later changed his story.
When he was arrested, police that Bates bound and gagged Dickson, stuffed the sock in her mouth and raped her in the living room, leaving her 18-month-old son in a playpen with no food or water for three days.
Dickson’s body was found Feb. 20, 1994, by a former boyfriend. He went to check on Dickson after her friends expressed concern about her.
Two years later, he told police that she had a green sock stuffed in her mouth, a fact withheld by police, Bates’ attorney wrote in his brief.
“At that interview, detectives concluded that [the ex-boyfriend] was the killer because there was ‘no way’ [he] could have known this fact unless he put the sock there himself,” the brief said. “Police told [the ex-boyfriend] they had enough evidence to arrest him.”
Though he allegedly found the body, Dickson’s body was covered with a blanket and other items, so the sock was not visible, the brief said. The former boyfriend offered no explanation as to how he knew about the sock. Police did not interview him after 1996, when he hired an attorney.
Other alternative suspects include Dickson’s ex-husband and a man who had been in Dickson’s apartment building the night she reportedly died, the brief said. He allegedly attended a party across the hall from the victim’s apartment, then confessed to his wife that he “he had killed a woman and left her young child crying in a playpen,” McNamara said.
In the state’s brief opposing a new trial Macomber said that the male DNA on the sock likely came from Dickson’s son. He also said that the jury was aware the the victim had multiple sexual partners, including the man who discovered her body.
“The jury presumably considered the fact that Bates’ semen was found in the swabs of the victim’s vagina and genitals during the autopsy — and that he repeatedly denied that he ever had sex with her — to be much more important evidence,” he said.
There is no timetable under which the justices must issue their decision.