“Instead, the State’s case relied almost exclusively on Petitioner’s (Blank’s) videotaped confession to those crimes, which occurred on November 13, 1997, over the course of a 12-hour interrogation in police custody, without an attorney present,” Jackson wrote in his ruling. In his ruling, Jackson said that despite the violent nature of the crimes and large amounts of fingerprints, DNA, and other evidence collected from the crime scenes, prosecutors could not produce any forensic evidence connecting Blank to “ any of the crime scenes.” Jackson last month ordered the independent testing on multiple pieces of evidence from the various crime scenes, overturning a decision by a lower court. United States District Court Judge Brian A. DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, contains a person’s genetic code and is often used to connect them to or exclude them from various pieces of evidence. The federal ruling notes that DNA evidence from three different crime scenes do not match Blank, including DNA from a baseball bat, cigarette butts, and DNA found under one victim’s fingernails.

His girlfriend at the time was also arrested, accused of driving him to many of the crime scenes. However, District Attorney Ricky Babin said Tuesday he is confident that Blank is guilty and does not expect this ruling to change anything related to the high-profile case that dates back nearly 25 years.īlank initially confessed to the series of home invasions and killings but later claimed his confession was false. (WAFB) - A federal court judge has ordered multiple Louisiana law enforcement agencies to turn over evidence from the case of River Parishes serial killer Daniel Blank so that evidence can be independently tested for DNA.

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