There was one major problem with the Santa Clara County crime lab report that implicated a San Jose man of sexual assault:

It wasn’t true.

The document was a fake, created by a San Jose police detective. The crime lab analyst who purportedly prepared the document doesn’t exist. The number used to identify it was false.

Even so, detective Matthew Christian testified as though the phony report were authentic.

The case unraveled when the defense attorney sought the résumé of the lab analyst, only to learn there was no such person. Christian then remembered that he had concocted the report in an attempt to trick the defendant, Michael Kerkeles, 54, into admitting that he had forced a developmentally disabled neighbor into sexual acts. It was an acceptable tactic. But Christian said that by the time he was called to testify, more than a year later, he had forgotten the ruse.

The case, which attracted no public attention when it was dismissed last December, has raised concerns both about how the charges were handled and about how police and prosecutors responded when the fabrication and false testimony was discovered.

San Jose police Capt. Andy Galea said last week that after this incident, the department had banned detectives from using ruse crime lab reports when questioning suspects. He declined to say what discipline, if any, Christian received.

Prosecutors said they had referred the case to an internal committee that reviews cases involving allegations of potential criminal conduct by police officers. That committee, headed by Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins, concluded that the matter amounted to an honest mistake by the officer, Chief Assistant District Attorney Marc Buller said last week.

“We all make mistakes,” Buller said.

Buller also expressed confidence that the trial prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Jaime Stringfield, had done nothing wrong in eliciting testimony about the phony report while a contradictory lab report sat in her file.

Before the ruse was discovered, Christian and Stringfield ignored several signs – beyond the fact that no one named Rebecca Roberts worked in the county lab – that could have warned them the report was a fake.

The phony report claimed the crime lab had found semen on a blanket in Kerkeles’ garage – on the same day the blanket was seized. The report also claimed the DNA had been matched to Kerkeles. But obtaining DNA test results normally takes at least several days. In addition, Stringfield had in her file an authentic report from crime lab examiner Nancy Marte that concluded semen could not be found on the blanket.

Outside experts expressed concerns about the conduct of law enforcement officials in the case.

“On its face, it is reckless,” said Laurie L. Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who is an expert in prosecutorial ethics. “On its face, it is asking for trouble. It questions the credibility of both the prosecutor and the police.”

Stringfield said in an interview last week that she had paid scant attention to the real report, because it did not help her case. During that interview, she blamed Kerkeles’ defense attorney for not exposing the discrepancy between the two reports, both of which had been provided to the defense.

The fabricated report became key evidence against Kerkeles, because Stringfield failed at two different preliminary hearing dates to establish that the young woman at the center of the case was a competent witness – unable to convince the court that she knew the difference between a lie and the truth.

After the ruse was uncovered, the charges were dismissed with the agreement of the prosecutors. Kerkeles, who has no record of sex abuse charges, insisted last week in an e-mail interview conducted through his civil attorney Tim McMahon that he is innocent and that the incident “tore my life apart.” But Stringfield said in court documents that she still believes Kerkeles is guilty; last month, she helped persuade Superior Court Judge Edward Lee to deny Kerkeles’ request to be declared innocent.

Case’s origin

Questioning tactic

slips into police file

The case dates to March 2005, when the mother of a 22-year-old mentally disabled woman saw her daughter running from the direction of Kerkeles’ house down the street. (The Mercury News is withholding the name of the woman, who has the mental capacity of a 7- or 8-year-old.)

Later, the woman said Kerkeles had “touched her all over” on a blanket inside his garage.

Kerkeles was charged in April, largely based on the word of the woman and her mother. He was quickly released from custody on bail.

The accuser told widely contradictory stories to the officers and a nurse about whether she had been to Kerkeles’ house, and whether he had sexually attacked her. The woman told officers that a teen who previously lived nearby also had been raped at the house, an allegation the girl denied.

Kerkeles said he never touched the woman.

On May 4, 2005, police seized a blanket from Kerkeles’ garage. That day, Christian prepared a report that said testing proved that semen identified as Kerkeles’ was found on the blanket.

Christian would later explain he prepared the report to use in interviewing Kerkeles – the law permits police to lie during questioning, as long as their techniques are not coercive.

Christian did not return calls from the Mercury News. But Galea, the San Jose police captain, said fake reports, while legal, were rare. In this case, Kerkeles asked for an attorney, so the interview with Christian never went forward.

The officer later said he put the report into a police file and forgot about it. Galea said normal procedure would require an officer to write the word “ruse” on such a document after it was used in an interview.

By late July 2005, both the fake report prepared by Christian and the authentic report prepared by Marte were in the hands of the prosecutor. They also had been provided to the defense. Defense attorney Kurt Seibert twice asked Stringfield for more information about the two reports in 2005. But Stringfield turned down the requests, saying one was too “vague.”

She said in an interview last week that because she considered the case to be based on the victim’s testimony, she paid little attention to the reports. She described first noticing the report of “Rebecca Roberts” as she and Seibert went through Christian’s file in the courtroom as they awaited a hearing last year.

“I went through the file and remember seeing that report and thinking, ‘Holy moly, I actually do have physical evidence,’ ” she said.

Though the crime lab is a division of the district attorney’s office, Stringfield said, she did not know the names of the lab analysts and would not have known the name Rebecca Roberts was fictitious. In the report Christian later would prepare on the matter, he said he did not recall when Stringfield found the fake report that it was phony. Nor did he notice that the name Rebecca Roberts was one he had made up himself.

Case unravels

Résumé request;

charges dropped

By the third preliminary hearing date, the accuser was still deemed not competent to testify. Stringfield went forward, basing her case on the word of the woman’s mother, along with testimony from nurses and police officers with whom the woman had spoken.

Christian testified that the accuser told him that Kerkeles had engaged in sexual relations with her on the blanket on his garage on several occasions. As Stringfield questioned Christian later, after he had testified about the woman’s statements, Stringfield changed course:

“This blanket that you seized, did you submit it to the crime lab for analysis?” she asked.

“Yes,” Christian said.

“Are you aware of any results?” she asked.

“Yes. There was semen found on the blanket,” Christian said.

Superior Court Judge Gilbert T. Brown ordered Kerkeles to stand trial. Stringfield listed Roberts, the fake analyst, among her trial witnesses.

Seibert filed more requests for information from Stringfield about the lab reports, and asked for Roberts’ résumé.

Prosecutors forwarded the request to the crime lab. It was returned with an arrow pointing to Roberts’ name. The note next to it reads “not real.”

Stringfield then contacted Christian, who told her he recalled creating the fake report. The charges were dropped last December.

Contending he had been improperly prosecuted based on the false word of an unreliable witness, Kerkeles went back to court this year to seek a finding that he was innocent of the charges. “Christian’s explanation for his perjury was and remains fantastical,” the motion filed by Seibert states.

But Stringfield, in opposition, disagreed: “I in no way believe defendant is factually innocent,” she wrote.

Judge Lee denied the request.