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Posted: 7:48 PM- LOGAN - Attorneys for Glenn Howard Griffin on Wednesday wrapped up their case with a final attack on the evidence that allegedly links the 51-year-old man to a 1984 Brigham City slaying.

Defense witness James Gaskill, a forensic scientist who was headed the Utah Crime Lab when it was established in 1972 and for many subsequent years, told the jury the Griffin case revealed some of the worst crime scene analysis he has ever seen.

Gaskill said he was troubled by an undocumented chain of evidence, the movement of the DNA evidence - a dollar bill stained with blood and human hair - from the crime scene to the state's crime lab.

"I only have very few documents relating to evidence in this case," Gaskill said. "We have a serious contamination issue here."

Gaskill said the DNA found on the dollar bill that allegedly matches Griffin's could have come from saliva, sweat or a sneeze.

"The bill was minted in 1981 so it could have been a three-year-old stain," he said, adding that money goes through the hands of many people.

Prosecuting attorney Brad Smith argued that the chances of DNA matches - of blood on the dollar bill and hair - at the scene of the crime are "astronomical."

Defense attorneys never asked Griffin to take the witness stand. As Judge Ben Hadfield of the Brigham City 1st District Court prepared jurors for Thursday's deliberations, he told them not to let Griffin's silence sway their opinions.

If the defendant is satisfied with the evidence, Hadfield said, there is no reason for him to take the stand.

"It should not be considered as any indication of his guilt or innocence," he told the jury. Following closing arguments Thursday morning, jurors will be asked by state prosecutors to find Griffin guilty of the 1984 aggravated murder of convenience store clerk Bradley Newell Perry, 22, in an apparent robbery at a Texaco gas station near Brigham City. With a unanimous verdict, Griffin could be sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole or to death by lethal injection. Hadfield denied a defense request to have the lesser second-degree murder charge excluded, so the jury will also have the option to find Griffin guilty of murder without kidnapping and robbery as aggravating factors.

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