A federal judge on Friday denied access to DNA evidence that defense lawyers say will exonerate a man whose 2003 conviction of a heinous rape at a Lakewood trailer park rape largely relied on the testimony of a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who was forced to resign last year for manipulating DNA data in other cases.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico dismissed the request for additional DNA testing filed on behalf of James Hunter, now 64, who contends that his 168-year prison sentence is a travesty of justice. Hunter has been incarcerated for more than 21 years.

Hunter’s conviction is one of thousands now under scrutiny that involved former CBI state crime lab scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods. The CBI in March announced the discovery of “anomalies” in the work of Woods put “all her work in question.”

Woods, through her lawyer, Ryan Brackley, has denied ever creating or falsely reporting “any inculpatory DNA matches or exclusions.” She also has denied that she ever “testified falsely in any hearing or trial resulting in a false conviction or unjust imprisonment.”

Despite defense assertions of flawed work by Woods in Hunter’s case, Domenico in his ruling stated that he did not have jurisdiction to order the Lakewood Police Department, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office and the CBI to allow Hunter’s lawyers to have the rape kit and other evidence tested for DNA.

Hunter and his lawyers claim in court documents that new DNA testing probably would establish the culprit of the 1 a.m. April 23, 2002, attack and rape as Kenneth Dale Smith, another man convicted in 2016 of a similar crime in Missouri. Smith has denied he was involved in the Lakewood rape.

Domenico ruled that Hunter’s efforts to obtain evidence for additional DNA testing already had been rejected by the Colorado Court of Appeals. Court precedents “preclude a losing party in state court who complains of injury caused by a state-court judgment from bringing a case seeking review and rejection of that judgment in federal court,” Domenico stated in his ruling.

That doctrine “provides that only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to hear appeals from final state-court judgments,” Domenico further ruled.

Challenges that assert a state statute is unconstitutional are permitted in federal court, but Domenico said the claims from Hunter and his lawyer that Colorado’s DNA statute was unconstitutional were “threadbare.”

“Plaintiff’s primary objection to the DNA statute has to do with the way state judicial officials chose to apply the law in this case, not with the constitutionality of the law itself,” Domenico wrote.

“While I take no stance here on the merit of plaintiff’s claims about the reliability of the evidence that was used to support his underlying conviction, I do note that the entire gist of the complaint is to suggest that the Colorado Court of Appeals made an incorrect determination when it found that a favorable DNA test result would not have been enough to make a showing of actual innocence,” Domenico further wrote in the ruling.

Members of Hunter’s family and his defense team, initially defense lawyer Thomas Henry and now defense lawyer Kenneth Mark Burton, support his claims of innocence. He was convicted in 2003 of breaking into the trailer next to the one he lived in, of raping the woman living there and of molesting her 5-year-old daughter during the more than four-hour attack.

Hunter’s initial arrest for the rape in Lakewood hinged on Woods’ sworn statement that her microscopic analysis found two pubic hairs from the rape victim matched pubic hairs Hunter, then 43, had allowed police to collect from him. Her analysis turned out to be flawed, and a judge freed Hunter from jail after a lab in Pennsylvania determined the DNA from the pubic hairs actually matched the DNA of the victim.

Woods and prosecutors two months after Hunter’s release took the case to a grand jury, citing new evidence. They secured an indictment against Hunter and eventual conviction on burglary and sexual assault charges. The heart of the prosecution case hinged on Woods’ testimony that additional DNA analysis by her showed a hair collected by police from the victim’s bed contained a mixture of the victim’s DNA and Hunter’s DNA, and a hair police found on the couch in the victim’s living room matched Hunter’s DNA.

The defense lawyers in court filings have said there are problems with the chain of custody related to the hair samples. Even Lakewood police were confused as to why two crime-scene hair packets were returned from the CBI crime lab, when there originally was only one crime-scene hair packet, according to an evidence log obtained during discovery.

The defense lawyers also note that fingerprints and a palm print taken at the crime scene do not match Hunter’s prints. The defense in court filings said police and prosecutors have never submitted the fingerprints taken from the crime scene to a national database of fingerprints taken from individuals arrested for violent crimes. Hunter’s lawyer did not initially comment on the ruling from Domenico.

Hunter initially became a suspect after the victim told police the voice of her masked assailant might have sounded like Hunter, her neighbor. While under hypnosis, she told police something in the voice of her attacker sounded “a little” like her next-door neighbor, but that there also was something that didn’t sound like him.

A 2024 internal investigation, still not released to the public, found that Woods deviated from standard protocols throughout her 29-year career with the CBI, which ended in November when she retired after state officials placed her on administrative leave. The internal affairs investigation found that Woods during her tenure tampered with DNA results and omitted material facts in official criminal justice records.

The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation into Woods on Colorado’s behalf to avoid a conflict of interest.