District Attorney: No retrial for man convicted in 1985 murder in Monterey

The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office announced that Jack Edward Sagin, who was convicted of a 1985 Monterey murder, will not be retried.

In 1986, Sagin was charged with one count of murder during a residential burglary in July 1985. He was also charged with six other counts of burglary or attempted burglary in July and August 1985,.

Sagin was found guilty of the murder, but no DNA evidence was presented at the trial because the technology did not exist. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder and 12 years in prison for burglary charges and prior prison term enhancements.

Sagin’s direct appeal was denied, and his attempts to get post-conviction relief in state and federal court were denied.

In 2001, the Northern California Innocence Project contacted the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office about his case, and in 2003, his lawyers reviewed the case file. A couple months after that, they were appointed by the trial court to file a motion for post-conviction DNA testing.

In January 2008, Sagin filed the motion for testing, and the motion was granted in February 2009. Testing was ordered on items that had male DNA, including a bathrobe, towels, vaginal swabs, a marijuana cigarette, hair from a couch cushion and scrapings from underneath the victim’s fingernails.

The male DNA profiles from the items belonged to five unknown men, and none of them matched Sagin.

After receiving the results, the DA’s Office and Monterey police continued to investigate and got DNA samples from five men known to the victim at the time of the murder. Those men included her then-boyfriend, ex-boyfriends, a family member and a coworker. Two DNA samples were taken from two other men involved in the case. Investigators also interviewed the DNA donors and other possible witnesses.

The DA’s office had new testing performed on evidence, and the DNA found on most of the evidence came from the five men who knew the victim. The only unknown male DNA came from the victims’ fingernail scrapings. In 2011, that DNA profile was uploaded to a criminal offender database to see if any profile matched. It did not match a known offender.

In 2012, Sagin petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus because his DNA was not at the crime scene. The court trial denied the petition because at the time it required a petitioner to prove the new evidence pointed to the person’s innocence and undermined the prosecution’s entire case. A petitioner would have to establish innocence.

In 2016, the Court of Appeal ordered an evidentiary hearing in the case. Before that, the Legislature changed the statute governing relief for newly discovered evidence. A petitioner looking to get relief under the amended statute would only need to prove the new evidence would more likely than not change the outcome at trial.

A changed outcome would mean a different result from a guilty verdict. It does not require an acquittal, but includes a hung jury. That meant Sagin would need to show that the new DNA evidence would have more than likely led to at least one juror maintaining a reasonable doubt of guilt.

In April 2017, the trial court held the hearing, but Sagin was denied relief in May 2017.

The next month, Sagin filed a new petition for a writ of habeas corpus at the Court of Appeal. On Aug. 30, 2019, the Court of Appeal issued a published decision reversing the trial court’s decision and reversing Sagin’s murder conviction. It had no effect on other counts of burglary Sagin admitted to committing.

The Court of Appeal made several observations about the case. It said the DNA evidence under the victim’s fingernails dos not prove Sagin was innocent, and standing alone, it does not prove someone else committed the crime. It also observed that DNA evidence does not prove Sagin was not at the crime scene, only that his DNA was not on the items tested. The Court of Appeal observed that under the former standard for habeas relief, Sagin would not be entitled.

The DA’s office said there were several factors in its decision not to seek a retrial. First, the murder happened more than 34 years ago. After that amount of time, memories of witnesses usually fade. Second, two of the four main prosecution witnesses linking Sagin to the murder and burglary died. Third, some evidence was testimony from police informants with felony convictions. Finally, the unknown male DNA raised a reasonable doubt about the identity of the perpetrator.

Since the decision not to go forward with a retrial, the DA’s office and the Northern California Innocence Project worked together to expedite Sagin’s release from prison, and the result was a release weeks earlier than otherwise contemplated by the Court of Appeal.