County's First DNA Criminal Case Yields Sentence for Indiana Man
By Karen Gould

Thirty-six-year-old Robert Day of Indiana was sentenced to 18 to 40 years in prison Friday, January 19, for raping an elderly St. Ignace woman at her home in October 2000. Mr. Day will be returned to Indiana to continue serving prison time for a similar conviction in that state.

Mackinac County Prosecutor Fred Feleppa said Mr. Day pleaded guilty in 11th Circuit Court to the first degree criminal sexual assault charge in a plea bargain deal that allowed a lesser charge of home invasion to be dismissed. Mr. Feleppa said the negotiated sentence was agreed to in an effort to minimize further trauma to the victim, who otherwise would have had to testify.

Mr. Day was not immediately apprehended following the St. Ignace assault in 2000, but was identified later through DNA testing.

Mr. Feleppa said this is the county's first criminal conviction using DNA results and was made possible by the quick thinking of the victim and the cooperation of the State of Indiana.

He said following the assault, the St. Ignace woman called police and was taken to the hospital, where DNA samples were collected and sent to the Michigan State Police crime laboratory. A short time later, Mr. Day was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison in Indiana on a similar offense.

Mr. Feleppa said DNA is collected from those charged with felonies and recorded in a national DNA database called the Combined DNA Index System.

Michigan State Police then found the match to Mr. Day's DNA information. A second DNA test was taken while Mr. Day remained in prison in Indiana and confirmed the match, explained Mr. Feleppa.

"Without the science of it, we would never have tracked him down," said Mr. Feleppa.

Police were able to show that Mr. Day was a summer worker in the St. Ignace area at the time of the attack.

Through the persistence of Michigan police, Indiana Governor Mitchell Daniels signed an extradition notice in the fall of 2005 to send Mr. Day to St. Ignace to face prosecution for the crime. The power to execute an extradition agreement from one state to another lies with the governors of each state.

Former prosecutor Clayton Graham worked on the extradition while he negotiated the charge.

Mr. Day never went to trial in Mackinac County. He had a district court preliminary examination in November 2006 and was bound over to Circuit Court in January. Testimony was taken from the victim and officers from the Michigan State Police Crime Lab testified on the DNA results.

Mr. Feleppa said the St. Ignace police and the Mackinac County Sheriff's Department will share the responsibility of returning Mr. Day to Indiana, where he will continue to serve time on his Indiana conviction. For his Michigan conviction, Mr. Day will be eligible for parole in 18 years. If he is freed from the Indiana prison system before then, Mr. Day will be returned to Michigan to complete the rest of his sentence, which could be up to 40 years.

The Indiana and Michigan sentences are being served concurrently, said Mr. Feleppa. The Indiana sentence is 40 years to 80 years, although Mr. Feleppa said Indiana law could allow Mr. Day to be released from Indiana prison system before that sentence is fulfilled or he could have his case overturned on appeal in Indiana. At which time, he would be returned to Michigan.

Mr. Feleppa said, "The 18-year sentence is the biggest sentence I've seen in the 10 years I have been here." Although it took five years to work through the legal system with the additional DNA testing and the extradition process, he noted, it was worth it to bring Mr. Day to justice.

"We hit a couple of snags along the way, but we kept at it," he said.