Paternity Suit Raises Doubts About DNA Tests

When the paternity action was brought in early 2003, Chreky said, he thought the DNA test would end the whole episode.

Instead, Chreky was ordered to pay $1,715 a month in child support, plus health insurance premiums, after LabCorp's report said he was the father. By the time Lucas turned 18, Chreky had paid $25,000. (Even after he won the case, Virginia law did not allow him to get the money back.)

Chreky pleaded his case to the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement and then in an appeal to Fairfax Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. But LabCorp's "99.99 percent" finding was too tough to overcome. In fact, under Virginia law, 98 percent is automatic proof of paternity.

This spring, his case landed in Fairfax County Circuit Court in a full-blown trial. Douglas S. Levy, one of Chreky's attorneys, said Chreky offered to take another DNA test before his trial. But the state rejected the offer, he said.

So Chreky's attorneys hammered LabCorp's experts, mostly about what the lawyers saw as two errors on the lab report. The director of LabCorp's DNA identification testing division, Gary M. Stuhlmiller, said in a sworn report that he had arrived at his conclusions after comparing Chreky's DNA with a database of the Moroccan population. Chreky is a native of Morocco.

But at trial, Stuhlmiller acknowledged that LabCorp did not have a Moroccan database.

Stuhlmiller's report also listed 11 columns of numbers. But at trial, Stuhlmiller acknowledged that 13 tests were run, not 11. He said two were "not reportable" because they did not work properly.

Mueller, who testified on Chreky's behalf, said LabCorp should have simply rerun the tests. Instead, LabCorp omitted the two remaining columns from its report. Stuhlmiller's report did not mention the omitted tests, which he acknowledged could have precluded Chreky as the father.

And then there was Stuhlmiller's workload. He told the judge he personally reviewed 30,000 paternity cases a year, working 10 hours a day with no lunch break, 40 weeks a year, with time away for training and vacation. "And that would be 15 [reports] an hour, is that right?" Chreky's lead attorney, Glenn C. Lewis, asked him.

"Correct," Stuhlmiller answered.

Stuhlmiller declined to comment, but Smith, the LabCorp spokesman, said focusing on Stuhlmiller ignored the time spent by other lab personnel compiling the data. "I don't think it's a fair representation of the amount of time or care that we spent to make sure that was a fair review," Smith said.

LabCorp has performed Virginia's paternity testing since 2001 and charges the state $39.50 per test, or about $120 per case. State statistics show LabCorp was paid $797,000 last year and did almost 20,000 tests. LabCorp began paternity testing in 14 of Maryland's 24 jurisdictions in October and had performed about 6,000 tests through July.

Stitt found LabCorp's "99.99 percent" report "not statistically valid." Combining that with his distrust of Doudaklian's testimony, Stitt ruled that the state had "failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Andre Chreky is the father of Andrew Lucas."

How could a judge discard a seemingly definitive DNA report? Experts said it was virtually unheard of.

But Mueller pointed to a number of incidents of lab error in recent years, including allegations of problems with crime labs in Houston and Richmond.

Crime labs in Philadelphia and Minnesota were later discovered to have sent out "false matches."

"It's a terribly important issue," Mueller said. "People involved in doing these techniques make mistakes that are not involved with technology. . . . Until you get humans out of the system, these things can happen."

Chreky is no scientist. He said he just knew that this was something he needed to fight. Most people don't have the means to contest a "99.99 percent" finding. His wife, Serena, said the couple spent more than $200,000 to fight the case.

Chreky said he spent much of the past three years overwhelmed with anxiety about the case. "I've been getting up at 3:30, sleeping a couple of hours a night," he said. "I tried to keep busy. You don't want to think about it."