A man who has spent about a decade in prison for a 1991 double homicide in Colorado Springs deserves a new trial because he was incompetently represented and because new DNA evidence suggests others may have been the killers, his lawyers said Wednesday.

Timothy Kennedy, 52, was convicted in 1997 of shooting 15-year-old Jennifer Carpenter and her 37-year-old companion, Steve Staskiewicz, in a west-side trailer the two shared.

Fourth Judicial District prosecutors told Judge Thomas Kane that Kennedy’s lawyer put on a strong defense in an old case featuring a cast of witnesses who lived on the fringe of society and who had major credibility problems.

And the new, scant DNA evidence found on the victims’ clothing, said senior deputy district attorney Robyn Cafasso, proves only that others had been in the victims’ trailer, perhaps in the weeks leading up to the killings.

The DNA, she said, didn’t negate the fact that bullets used to kill the couple matched bullets found in Kennedy’s apartment – and that his gun fired them.

She said jurors heard in from a parade of witnesses and from Kennedy and came away believing he had committed the crimes.

The Colorado Court of Appeals in 2000 upheld Kennedy’s two first-degree murder convictions.

Kennedy’s court-appointed lawyers, John Dicke and Kathleen Carlson, argued that Kennedy’s attorney during the trial, Kenneth Dresner, did little pretrial investigation, failed to call witnesses on Kennedy’s behalf, didn’t listen or view audio and video tapes of interviews with witnesses and potential suspects and didn’t challenge the prosecution’s computer re-creation of the crime that they say was speculative and prejudicial.

The two said Dresner, who no longer lives in Colorado, failed to aggressively pursue the defense that others were responsible for the killings. That theory, they said, carried extra weight because Carpenter had been kidnapped and raped by a couple just four months before the killings.

Dicke said there was evidence that Charles Stroud and Rebecca Corkins tried to intimidate Carpenter into not testifying about the kidnap and rape. Stroud is now serving a 50-year sentence for those crimes, and Corkins has been released after serving 10 years.

Dicke said the prosecution’s theory – that Kennedy was angry that Staskiewicz had not returned a gun and electronic equipment he had loaned him – paled in comparison to the motive Stroud and Corkins had for shutting up the victims.

Colorado Springs defense attorney Greg Walta called Dresner’s defense “darn near criminal.”

Dicke also said that DNA testing suggested that someone else had dragged or carried the bodies after the shooting.

Kane said he will issue a ruling later on the request for a new trial.

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