Massachusetts Appeals Court Vacates Manslaughter Conviction Over Substitute DNA Analyst Testimony
The Massachusetts Appeals Court’s recent decision in Commonwealth v. Frederick Pinney, No. 24-P-1472 (Mass. App. Ct. Sept. 2, 2026), is an important application of the developing confrontation-clause law governing forensic evidence. The Court vacated Pinney’s involuntary manslaughter conviction because the Commonwealth presented critical DNA evidence through substitute analysts who had not performed the underlying testing and whose opinions depended on the work of an analyst who never testified.
The decision follows the Supreme Judicial Court’s 2025 opinion in Commonwealth v. Gordon, 496 Mass. 554 (2025), which itself applied the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Smith v. Arizona, 602 U.S. 779 (2024). But Pinney is particularly useful because it demonstrates what happens after a confrontation violation is established. The question is not simply whether improper substitute-expert testimony came in. The real fight may be whether that evidence mattered enough to require a new trial.
Here, it did.
The Case Against Pinney
TayClair Moore was found dead in Pinney’s bedroom in Springfield in March 2014. Pinney was originally charged with first-degree murder. His first trial ended in a mistrial after juror misconduct. At his second trial in 2023, the jury rejected the murder charge but convicted him of involuntary manslaughter. He received a nine-to-ten-year State prison sentence.
The case was anything but straightforward. The Commonwealth’s medical examiner testified that Moore died from ligature strangulation. The defense presented its own forensic pathologist, who believed the findings were not definitive for strangulation and were more consistent with mixed drug intoxication. Moore had Suboxone, cocaine, citalopram, marijuana, and alcohol in her system. The medical examiner could not determine a precise time of death.
There was also a significant third-party culprit issue. Moore’s boyfriend, Christopher Podgurski, had been with her earlier that day and later discovered her body. The defense theory was that Podgurski killed Moore and moved her body into Pinney’s bedroom while Pinney was asleep. Evidence showed that Podgurski had previously strangled Moore on multiple occasions, and he testified under an immunity agreement that gave him an obvious reason to minimize his own potential involvement.
That background made the DNA evidence particularly important.
The Commonwealth Used Substitute Analysts to Present the DNA Results
The original DNA testing had been performed by Kira Snyder, a former Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory employee. Snyder did not testify at Pinney’s second trial.
Instead, the Commonwealth called two other crime-lab employees, Kathleen Gould and Krista Lungren. Their testimony relied extensively on Snyder’s testing and reports. Through them, the Commonwealth presented evidence that Pinney’s DNA was consistent with a bloodstain found on Moore’s body and that a possible ligature contained a mixed DNA profile consistent with both Moore and Pinney. Other DNA evidence was used to exclude or distinguish Podgurski.
At the time of the 2023 trial, Massachusetts precedent permitted that type of substitute-analyst testimony. The law changed while Pinney’s appeal was pending.
In Gordon, the SJC held that a substitute expert may not give an opinion that depends upon the truth of testimonial hearsay generated by a nontestifying analyst. That rule followed Smith v. Arizona, and Gordon expressly made the new rule applicable to cases that were still pending on direct review when Smith was decided.
The Commonwealth therefore conceded in Pinney that the testimony should not have been admitted. The Appeals Court independently agreed: Gould and Lungren’s opinions depended upon the findings and report of Snyder, who never testified, and their testimony violated Pinney’s confrontation rights.
The Error Was Not Harmless
That did not automatically end the case.
Because defense counsel had preserved the confrontation objection at trial, the Commonwealth had to prove that the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a demanding standard. The reviewing court asks whether the improperly admitted evidence had, or might have had, an effect on the jury’s verdict. Any doubts are resolved in favor of the defendant.
The Appeals Court concluded that the Commonwealth could not meet that burden.
The DNA evidence went directly to the two most important questions in the case: how Moore died and who killed her. The prosecution used the DNA results to connect Pinney and Moore to the alleged ligature, to place Pinney’s blood on Moore’s body, and to argue against the defense theory that Podgurski was responsible.
Just as importantly, this was not forensic evidence that appeared briefly and disappeared. The prosecutor emphasized it in opening statement and returned to it during closing argument as proof that Pinney, rather than Podgurski, killed Moore.
And the remaining case was not overwhelming. Podgurski’s credibility had been substantially impeached. His immunity agreement gave him an incentive to minimize his own involvement, and the jury knew of his history of strangling Moore. In that setting, the DNA supplied something particularly valuable to the prosecution: apparently objective scientific corroboration of a disputed witness.
The Court therefore could not say beyond a reasonable doubt that the improperly admitted DNA testimony had no influence on the verdict. The conviction was vacated.
That portion of Pinney is worth remembering. Harmless-error analysis cannot be reduced to asking whether there was “other evidence” of guilt. The question is what role the unconstitutional evidence played in the actual case that was tried. Evidence may be especially damaging where it gives scientific credibility to an otherwise vulnerable prosecution theory.
The Commonwealth May Still Use a New Buccal Swab
Pinney also challenged a second buccal swab obtained after an earlier DNA sample had been suppressed.
In an earlier appeal, the Appeals Court had ruled that the original buccal swab was the fruit of an illegal arrest and should have been suppressed. After remand, however, the Commonwealth obtained a court order compelling a new sample.
The Appeals Court rejected Pinney’s argument that the second sample was necessarily tainted by the first. The relevant question was whether the later evidence had been obtained through means sufficiently independent of the original illegality. The Commonwealth’s renewed application rested on evidence independent of the suppressed swab, including other DNA profiles, sexual-assault-kit evidence, the presence of Pinney and Podgurski at the scene, wounds on Pinney and Moore, and blood located elsewhere in the residence.
The Court emphasized that suppressing one item of evidence does not permanently prevent the Commonwealth from later obtaining similar evidence by lawful means. What the exclusionary rule prohibits is exploitation of the original constitutional violation. Because the second swab was obtained through a court order supported by independent probable cause, it remained admissible.
That ruling matters because the Appeals Court did not find the evidence legally insufficient. The Court held that the Commonwealth had presented sufficient evidence from which a jury could find involuntary manslaughter. The Commonwealth therefore remains free to retry Pinney.
A Significant Decision for Forensic Evidence in Massachusetts Criminal Cases
Pinney is another reminder that the label “expert opinion” does not allow the Commonwealth to place testimonial forensic evidence before a jury without producing the person whose work supplies the factual basis for that opinion.
Under Smith, Gordon, and now Pinney, the important inquiry is not simply whether the witness on the stand is herself qualified to interpret DNA evidence. Defense counsel must examine exactly what that witness knows independently, what testing someone else performed, which factual propositions from the absent analyst must be accepted as true for the substitute expert’s opinion to work, and whether the defendant ever had an opportunity to cross-examine the person who actually performed the underlying forensic work.
The footnote concerning retrial makes the practical consequence especially clear. Snyder testified at Pinney’s first trial but not the second. The Appeals Court noted that, if the Commonwealth seeks to rely on her testimonial work at a retrial without producing her, it will have to establish her unavailability and show that Pinney previously had an adequate opportunity for cross-examination.
The judgment was vacated, the verdict set aside, and the case returned to the Superior Court for a possible new trial.
For Massachusetts criminal defense lawyers, Pinney is worth reading alongside Gordon. It is not merely another statement of the substitute-analyst rule. It shows how to evaluate the importance of improperly admitted forensic testimony in the context of the entire trial—and why, when scientific evidence becomes the objective corroboration holding a disputed prosecution theory together, a confrontation violation may require the conviction to be set aside.
Benzaken, Sheehan & Wood, LLP represents individuals charged with serious criminal offenses throughout Massachusetts, including cases involving DNA, forensic evidence, homicide allegations, and constitutional challenges to the Commonwealth’s evidence.