Colpitts Trial Day 4: Doctor's testimony, DNA analysts link evidence to murder suspect
IDAHO COUNTY, ID (KLEW) — A woman walked out of the courtroom sobbing on Thursday after prosecutors gave an image of a shotgun wound to the doctor treating Samantha Fignani the day she was killed.
"I declared time of death at 20:33 (8:33 p.m.)” Dr. Rebecca Katzman says.
Police believe someone shot Fignani at close range with a 410 shotgun in May 2017. She was rushed from her Orofino home to Clearwater Valley Hospital.
"The patient was brought in not breathing,” Katzman says.
Katzman was the hospitalist physician at CVH that day. Says she and her team gave Fignani about 1500 milliliters of blood and used a defibrillator in their efforts to revive her.
Jessica Colpitts is the one accused of pulling the trigger.
In addition to medical professionals, day four of the trail featured experts in forensic DNA testing. Emily Jeskie of Sorenson Forensics oversaw the analysis of evidence that included gloves, clothing and swabs.
"We had a mixture of DNA profiles again from a minimum of three individuals, at least one of which genetically types as male,” Jeskie says. “Again, this mixture was inconclusive as well."
Jeskie says they got similar results from most of the evidence. But Cybergenetics analyst Beatriz Pujols says a newer technique called probabilistic genotyping had more answers.
"A match between the outside of the gloves and Jessica Colpitts is 95.5 thousand times more probable than coincidence,” she told the court.
A tank top came back 137 sextillion times likely to match with Colpitts. A pair of shorts was even more likely at 333 sextillion times.
Both fit the description of what a witness says Colpitts was wearing the day of the murder.
Pujols says that none of the items they analyzed came up with a positive match for Fignani's DNA.
