Closing arguments begin in Ian Mitcham murder trial

PHOENIX — Closing arguments began Monday in the murder trial of Ian Mitcham, the Tempe man accused of killing Allison Feldman in her Scottsdale home in February 2015.

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Allison’s father, Harley Feldman, looked down each time graphic crime scene and autopsy photos appeared on screen.

Mitcham, however, looked at the slides, taking notes and sitting silently. 

Feldman, 31, was found dead in her home near Loop 101 and Pima Road. Court documents said she died of asphyxiation with blunt force trauma.

The case went cold for three years. Police identified Mitcham as a suspect after DNA collected from the scene showed a familial match to a DNA profile on record with Mitcham’s brother, who was already in prison. It was the first time Arizona used familial DNA to lead investigators from a crime scene to a suspect.

Scottsdale police then learned a vial of Mitcham’s blood was in law enforcement’s possession from a 2015 DUI arrest. Without obtaining a new warrant, investigators analyzed the blood and created a DNA profile, which they say matched the unidentified DNA from the Feldman case. 

Mitcham was arrested in 2018.

But just as trial neared, a legal battle over that DNA evidence began. 

Mitcham’s defense team argued Scottsdale police violated his Fourth Amendment rights by using the old blood sample from a different case. A trial court agreed and threw the evidence out. An appeals court reversed that decision. Mitcham’s team then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case, which allowed the evidence at trial.

Prosecutors spent Monday walking the jury through the evidence, centering their case on the DNA match. No connection between Mitcham and Feldman has ever been identified, but prosecutors say he broke into her home, attacked her, sexually assaulted her and killed her.

“Ian Mitcham murdered Allison Feldman,” the prosecutor told jurors. “A man down on his luck, angry, nothing left to lose, drinking too much. Ian Mitcham went into Allison Feldman’s home, robbed her, sexually assaulted her, murdered her.”

Prosecutors say Mitcham then doused the house and Feldman’s body in bleach, destroying much of the DNA evidence but not all of it.

“Mitcham made every attempt to clean this crime scene to wipe away the brutality of what he had done. But he missed a few crucial spots of DNA,” said the prosecutor.

Mitcham’s attorney pushed back, telling jurors DNA alone was not enough to prove his client killed Feldman and that investigators failed to follow all leads or account for all DNA found at the scene.

“Ian did not commit this murder. He did not commit this crime. The Scottsdale Police Department’s focus on DNA led to the arrest of an innocent man,” Mitcham’s attorney said.

“At the end of the trial, I’m going to ask you to enter not guilty verdicts. Ian is innocent, and there’s a real possibility that someone other than Ian committed these crimes.”

If a guilty verdict is reached, the judge reminded the jury Monday that the penalty phase could last another two months.