Man convicted in Vt. murder seeks new trial

BURLINGTON, Vt. - The man convicted of raping and killing a University of Vermont student is asking for a new trial, saying that the judge gave improper instructions to the jury and that government witnesses misled jurors about the reliability of DNA evidence.

Brian L. Rooney's lawyer, David Sleigh, also argues in court papers that Rooney should be acquitted outright because the state failed to show that Michelle Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Va., was killed at the same time she was raped.

"There is insufficient evidence to prove that the sexual contact was criminal or that it occurred while Ms. Gardner-Quinn was being killed," Sleigh wrote in the motion for acquittal. "The state has not produced any evidence to establish the circumstances of the alleged contact between the defendant and Ms. Gardner-Quinn."

Rooney, 38, was convicted May 22 of aggravated murder in the 2006 death of Gardner-Quinn.

Gardner-Quinn, a university senior, was raped, beaten, and strangled after a chance meeting with Rooney in which she asked to use his cellphone. Her body was found six days later.

The defense motions started an appeal process that is automatic in Vermont murder convictions. The state has not responded.

Sleigh wrote that Judge Michael Kupersmith violated Rooney's rights by not telling jurors they could convict him of a charge less serious than aggravated murder, Vermont's most severe homicide count, which carries an automatic sentence of life without parole.

The defense maintains that the jury should have been allowed to consider convicting Rooney of second-degree murder and sexual assault, citing testimony by a medical expert that the rape and the killing occurred up to 30 minutes apart. For the aggravated murder charge, state law requires the crimes to have occurred "at the time of" one another.

Kupersmith said it would be "irrational" for jurors to find the crimes were separate.

Sleigh also reiterated another argument he tried to introduce at trial: that the sample of DNA recovered from Gardner-Quinn, said by expert witnesses to be a match with Rooney's, was too small to allow arriving at that conclusion.