BOULDER — Diego Olmos Alcalde’s lawyers came the closest yet Thursday to suggesting that their client had consensual sex with Susannah Chase, as the murder trial neared the end of its second week.
The legal dispute, which took place during the lunch break and out of the presence of the jury, centered on the condition of sperm found in Chase’s body shortly after she was brutally attacked near her Spruce Street home in December 1997.
DNA tests show the sperm found in the 23-year-old University of Colorado senior belongs to Alcalde, prosecutors say.
Alcalde’s attorneys appealed to Boulder District Judge James Klein to allow the jury to hear about supposed statements made by a Boulder Community Hospital lab technician that he detected non-motile, or old and sluggish, sperm in a sample from Chase’s sex-assault examination kit.
Attorney Mary Claire Mulligan said the possibility that the sperm found inside Chase weren’t fresh would indicate that her client had consensual sex with Chase days, if not weeks, before she was attacked.
Prosecutors allege that Alcalde raped and beat Chase on Dec. 21, 1997 — just a few hours before she was examined for sexual assault by a nurse.
They argued Thursday that information about the state or freshness of the sperm found in Chase shouldn’t be introduced at trial because it comes from a Boulder police detective, who said he heard it from the lab technician.
The lawyers also said there is no written record of the conversation between the detective and the lab tech.
The judge agreed with prosecutors.
“We don’t know who (the tech) is, and I’m supposed to let that in?” Klein said to Alcalde’s lawyers in an exasperated tone.
