• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- An attorney for a South Dakota man convicted of rape and kidnapping asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to grant his client a new trial because he was not allowed to question one of the experts who analyzed DNA evidence used against him.
• Gabriel D. Medicine Eagle Jr., now 35, was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison after advances in DNA testing prompted the state to charge him with assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 2000 near Winner.
• Medicine Eagle's lawyer, Paul Jensen of Winner, said his client was denied his constitutional right to confront a witness against him because one of the experts who analyzed and wrote a report about DNA evidence did not testify in the trial.
• "If there are scientific findings being made, scientific conclusions being made by somebody in the laboratory that implicate the defendant, I think that's an accuser," Jensen told the Supreme Court.
• But Assistant Attorney General Kirsten Jasper told the justices that Medicine Eagle's defense did question the expert who conducted the final DNA analysis. Some of those who did not testify at the trial merely prepared the DNA evidence for testing, she said.
• "The state asserts Medicine Eagle had full exercise of his confrontation rights in this case," Jasper said.
• The high court will issue a written decision in the case later.
• Jensen also told the Supreme Court that Medicine Eagle should get a new trial because prosecutors improperly used evidence that he had allegedly assaulted another girl in a similar manner.
• If the high court finds that Medicine Eagle was properly convicted, the justices should require that he be resentenced without considering allegations that he is a habitual offender, allegations used to enhance the sentence, Jensen said.
• Jasper said evidence of the second assault was properly admitted in the trial to

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