05/22/2008

By JOHN CURRAN  / Associated Press

"If I did it, I deserve to die."

Murder suspect Brian Rooney's spontaneous remark to a police officer — as he sat handcuffed to a wall in a holding cell on the day of his arrest — was played for a jury Wednesday as testimony concluded in the case against the 37-year-old man accused of killing a University of Vermont student from northern Virginia.

The case is expected to go to the jury Thursday.

The comment, contained in a videotape played in court, was among the noteworthy pieces of testimony on a busy day in which Rooney's ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend, an ex-roommate and the head of the Vermont Forensic Laboratory testified on behalf of the state.

Rooney opted not to testify in his defense.

His lawyer called only two witnesses to the stand — Rooney's mother and stepfather — after unsuccessfully appealing to Judge Michael Kupersmith for a judgment of acquittal, saying prosecutors hadn't offered enough proof even to have a jury consider the case.

If Rooney and victim Michelle Gardner-Quinn had had the violent, intimate encounter that prosecutors say, there would have been a significant exchange of trace evidence, David Sleigh said. But he said that none was found in searches of his unlaundered clothing, his home, his Jeep, his work site and a friend's home.

"All of their house of cards is, really when you think about it, is a pyramid built on its point, with its base in the air," Sleigh said. "If you take the two nanograms of sperm cells away, two nanograms of DNA away ... there's simply no adequate evidence to connect Mr. Rooney to having had nonconsensual sex while killing Miss Gardner-Quinn."

Prosecutors say Rooney happened upon Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Va., on a downtown Burlington street when she borrowed his cell phone because hers had died. They say he raped her and killed her to cover it up, leaving her bruised, haphazardly-dressed body stuffed in a rocky crevice at Huntington Gorge in Richmond — about five miles from his home.

DNA evidence obtained from semen found on her body links him to the killing, prosecutors say. Sleigh contends the DNA evidence is unreliable and that the rest of the state's case is circumstantial at best.

On Wednesday, Vermont Forensic Laboratory director Eric Buel defended his laboratory's work against attacks by Sleigh, acknowledging that evidence had been lost in one case and contaminated by an analyst in another, but that he knew of no such errors on the Rooney case.

He said a Marlboro cigarette pack recovered from the scene where Gardner-Quinn's body was found was labeled incorrectly in a clerical error, but that that occurred after it had been tested and was being prepared for disposal.

Buel said the lab, which handles about 2,000 cases a year, acknowledged to its accrediting body in 2006 that it had violated its own chain-of-custody policy, but said it had never lost its accreditation.

Rooney's "If I did it" comment was an unsolicited remark to Burlington police Officer Dan Merchand as the two waited in the Hardwick Police Department — where Rooney was taken after his arrest — for the lead detective in the case to pick up Rooney, Merchand testified.

"I really don't know what happened. Honestly, I don't remember that night ... If I did it, I deserve to die," Rooney said in the black-and-white video, which was played in the courtroom.

His ex-roommate William Welcome, 35, of Winooski, testified that Rooney came to visit him in the days after Gardner-Quinn's disappearance, while under police surveillance. Welcome, who said he has known Rooney for about 17 years, said Rooney was normally chipper and always in a good mood, but on one day in particular, he was "antsy, nervous" as he peered out the window at unmarked police cars outside.

Rooney was following TV news coverage of the case, and when a TV report showed the image of him walking beside Gardner-Quinn captured by a jewelry store surveillance camera, Welcome recognized the man in the image.

"I asked if that was him. First, he said no. I said 'It looked like you,'" Welcome said. Then, Rooney acknowledged it was him, Welcome said.

Rooney told Welcome he walked down the street with the woman but that they parted ways after that, and that Rooney said he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

Rooney's mother and stepfather testified that they saw him asleep on their couch the morning Gardner-Quinn went missing.

Sleigh's third witness was a no-show, so Kupersmith had law clerk Dickson Corbett read aloud to jurors portions of her testimony from a deposition taken last August.

In it, Ri Ra pub bartender Jen Schattenberg said Rooney had been drinking there the night Gardner-Quinn disappeared and that Rooney had cuts on his hands when she saw him — before he met up with Gardner-Quinn.

Closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday, and the seven-woman five-man jury will begin deliberating after that.