Authorities say recent DNA testing does not clear a person convicted of old violent felonies in Norfolk, because it was performed on evidence in two other crimes for which no one was ever convicted.

Gail Jaspen, chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, said Friday that the confusion resulted because the person in question was convicted of similar crimes against different victims during the same period.

"The Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's Office was able to pair police records with indictment information to clarify this issue," Jaspen said. She said the department will not release the DNA test results that would disclose the identity of the person.

A spokeswoman for the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's Office, citing the decision by the Department of Forensic Science, also declined to identify the man. In an Associated Press story last week, Norfolk authorities said he was serving life for sexual-assault convictions and was a suspect in the crimes for which the testing was performed.

Olga Akselrod, an attorney with the Innocence Project, said that because the crimes for which he was and was not convicted are said to be similar and happened during the same time frame, it raises many questions and his name should be released.

"If he is innocent and all of these crimes were committed by the same person, the DNA results excluding him from some of these crimes could be a critical lead in proving his innocence in all of the crimes," she said.

Akselrod said, "It is possible that the DNA testing may be of no relevance and that the person is not claiming innocence, but unless his identity is released we can't be sure." At minimum, she said the state should notify the defendant about the exclusion and tell him how to obtain counsel.

This month, the Department of Forensic Science disclosed test results in more than 70 old cases where the DNA profiles of convicted people were not found in crime scene evidence collected from 1973 to 1988.

Commonwealth's attorneys in Norfolk and Carroll County asked the department to withhold four such reports involving four people three in Norfolk and one in Carroll because they were deemed critical to ongoing investigations.

As part of its landmark post-conviction DNA project begun in 2005, the Department of Forensic Science was to conduct DNA testing of biological evidence found in old criminal case files that resulted in convictions in an effort to identify innocent people.

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DNA tests fail to clear man convicted of old felonies in Norfolk