Rapist, Murderer Loses Appeal

WILDWOOD — Deanno Wright’s recent birthday likely was not one of his happiest. On Oct. 28, the convicted rapist and murderer serving a life sentence in state prison turned 46 years old and learned that he lost his latest court appeal.
A three-judge panel rejected Wright’s appeal of his conviction in the 1996 sexual assault and stabbing death of 24-year-old Erin West, a medical technician and 1989 graduate of Wildwood High School.
Prosecutors in his murder trial argued that because his sexual advances were snubbed, Wright repeatedly stabbed West in her Tacony Road apartment and then raped her as she lay dying or dead.
“Her mother found her on the bedroom floor,” court documents stated. “She had been stabbed at least 13 times in the chest and neck; a broken knife blade protruded from a neck wound and a broken knife handle lay on her chest. She was naked from the chest down…A pillow and comforter covered her head. A pair of panties were around her left ankle.”
This chilling incident took place in the early morning hours of Jan. 7 as snow began to blanket the East Coast in the blizzard of 1996.
Wright, who served as a pallbearer at West’s funeral, was arrested about 10 weeks after the killing, based primarily on some stuff he left at the scene of the crime.
During their investigation, police collected blood samples for DNA testing from Wright and a dozen or so other suspects following West’s slaying. Wright’s DNA matched that found in semen collected from West’s body and on carpet under her body.
When questioned by police, Wright lied saying he never had sex with West.
He was tried in the spring of 1998 and given consecutive life sentences with a mandatory 30 years for murder and 25 for aggravated sexual assault.
In his appeal, Wright asked for more physical evidence from the scene to be DNA tested and challenged his trial attorney for not pushing to have more tests done.
Wright asked for “DNA testing of the evidence found at the crime scene that had been introduced and not introduced at trial.” Specifically, he argued that “the fingernails of the victim….could contain evidence,” that “blood evidence…was swabbed and never tested,” and “two different Caucasian pubic hairs were found at the crime scene and never tested.”
The appeals judges, however, found that the DNA evidence linking Wright to the crime along with his denial of having sex with West “presents overwhelming proof of his guilt…we conclude that the defendant was not entitled to the post-conviction DNA testing he sought.” The judges also noted that Wright “failed to demonstrate in any meaningful way how further testing of the evidence could have possibly changed the verdict in this case.”
Another point in Wright’s appeal dealt with race. West was white; Wright is black.
Wright suggested that he was denied a fair trial because prosecutors excluded African Americans from the jury. Of the eight challenges prosecutors made, three were black and one was Hispanic. According to a published report of the trial, only one of the 16 jurors was black.
The appellate panel also rejected this point, noting that it should have been presented in his previous appeals.
“Defendant’s subsequent allegation regarding the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude minority jurors could have easily been raised at the same time, but was not,” the judges said.
Now that his latest appeal has been rejected, Wright, who now goes by the Muslim name of Hassanali Abdullah, will likely spend the rest of his birthdays as a guest of the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
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Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com