P.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On the morning of March 3, 1998, a man brandishing a gun broke into R.M.’s Long Beach apartment as she slept and, after taking certain valuables from her at gunpoint, raped and orally copulated her. R.M. called 911 after the attacker left and was taken by sheriff’s deputies to a hospital, where a nurse performed a sexual assault examination that included collecting DNA samples with vaginal swabs. The nurse who performed the exam noted tearing in R.M.’s genital area that could have occurred during consensual intercourse but was more consistent with the blunt force trauma common to sexual assault. R.M. described her attacker as a young African-American who wore a mask and a black hoodie to conceal his face. She was able to recall his eyes, noting that the “whites” (sclera) were yellow. A few weeks after the attack, R.M. described the man to her neighbor, a professional artist, who made a sketch of the man based on that description. Vicky Ferguson lived less than one-fourth of a mile from R.M. After hearing about the attack, she called the sheriff’s department to tell them about an encounter she had that morning. Ferguson said she was unloading her van…