Pryor cannot retry Hayes, now 58, in the Florida case because the Constitution prohibits people from being retried for substantially the same crime if they were already acquitted.
"We believe it is just as relevant to speak the truth about what happened in this case," Pryor said on Wednesday, "and try to hold Mr Hayes accountable - to the extent possible - as it is to exonerate those who are innocent." He added that his office would speak to the parole board in New York "to ensure that Mr Hayes is not released from prison".
The Innocence Project of New York, which represented Hayes, did not comment on Wednesday, saying via email that "Mr Hayes's former attorney could not be reached".
Barbara Heyer, Hayes' lawyer in Florida, did not immediately respond to a call and email seeking comment on Wednesday. She told The Associated Press that Hayes had admitted to having sex with Albertson, so it would make sense to find his DNA on her.
Conviction overturned
The case comes as prosecutors and defence lawyers across the country continue to employ DNA testing, a powerful tool in courtrooms that has sometimes led to people being exonerated of wrongful convictions or helped investigators find the perpetrators in cold case killings from decades ago.
Hayes was initially convicted of raping and murdering Albertson in 1991 and sentenced to death, Pryor said in a statement. But the conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court in 1995 after it questioned the reliability of the original DNA test, which was one of the first of its kind in the state, he said.
The court's ruling had stemmed from a technique of DNA testing called "band-shifting" that it deemed unreliable. It involved slightly tweaking the bands on a DNA test, which would have been on X-ray film in the 1990s, said Dan Krane, a professor of biology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who has researched tools to evaluate DNA evidence for criminal investigations.
"The court was saying, if the band-shifting didn't occur, this wouldn't be a good match," Krane said.
That evidence was not allowed during the second trial. A Florida jury found Hayes not guilty at a retrial in 1997.
In the 1990s, DNA tests required a much larger sample size to be effective, like a blood stain the size of a quarter, Krane said.
Now, the quantity needed for an accurate DNA test is too small for the naked eye to see. Often, he said, all that is required are the few cells left behind by the touch of a fingertip.
It's likely investigators in 2021 did a "differential extraction" DNA test for this case, which separates sperm cells from other types of cells, Krane said. The cells can still be detected even decades later, especially if they are kept in a cool, dark laboratory, he said.
Manslaughter charge
Hayes' association with the Florida case led the authorities in New York to charge him with manslaughter in the 1987 killing of Leslie Dickenson, a horse groomer at the Vernon Downs racetrack, 64 kilometres east of Syracuse.
Dickenson's death had initially been ruled a suicide, but it was reinvestigated after Hayes was charged in the killing of Albertson.
Lawyers from the Innocence Project of New York argued that the hairs found in Albertson's hands had belonged to a man who also worked on the same racetrack circuit as Hayes and both victims, and who they believed was the "real killer", Pryor said. The latest DNA testing, however, showed that some of the hair belonged to Albertson and not to Hayes or the other racetrack worker.
Donna Dickenson-Helps, Dickenson's sister, said in a statement on Wednesday that one of her biggest regrets was that Hayes "took her from us and she never got to know both her nieces and her great-nieces and nephews".
"I still miss her," she said, "and cry when I think of her."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Eduardo Medina
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
