The DNA Re-Read: Day 6 Put Paitin Fields' DNA Beside the Uncle's. Who Asked for It in 2021?

Paitin Fields was five years old in November 2017. Her uncle, David Prevatte, was 19, and he has always said the same thing about that night: he found her, and he tried to save her. The State named him a suspect in 2018. It charged him in 2022. For five days of trial, the jury in Burgaw, North Carolina, has been waiting to learn what the State had in those four years that it did not have at the start.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, Day 6, the jury heard the DNA.

They heard it from three scientists at the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, in the order the work was done. The first one screened the evidence for body fluids in 2017 and 2018. The second one wrote the first DNA reports in 2018, and when the defense asked her whether she had found Paitin's DNA on anything she tested, she said, "Not on anything that I was able to interpret, no." The third one took the same case back up in 2021. He ran the 2018 data through new software and swabbed a pair of tan work pants, and by the end of the day the jury had heard Paitin's DNA and David Prevatte's DNA named together on a pair of red earbuds and on four swabs of that one pair of pants.

That is a real development for the State, and I am going to treat it as one. A five-year-old's DNA beside a grown man's on the inside waistband of a pair of men's work pants is not something a jury sets aside easily, and nobody should pretend otherwise.

But the same day put something else in front of the jury, and it goes straight to the question this whole case has carried since Day 1. The evidence that puts the two of them together is 2021 work. The analyst who did it told the jury he swabbed those pants because, in his words, "I believe I was contacted and requested for specific areas of the pants to be swabbed." Months later he was asked to swab more of them. The jury heard who did that work and when. Nobody told them who asked for it, or why it was asked for then, three years after David Prevatte was named and the year before he was charged. That is the question I am putting at the center of Day 6.

First, the ground rules. David Prevatte has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and the other charges in this case. He is presumed innocent, and the State carries the whole burden of proving otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. The State gave notice on Feb. 9 that it will not seek the death penalty, as the StarNews reported. DNA tells you whose DNA is on an object. On its own it does not tell you how it got there or when, and on Thursday the State's own analysts said as much. Nothing I write here is a finding. Every question I raise is anchored to something said in that courtroom, and when it is my opinion, I will tell you.

Stains of unknown source, and unknown age

When the jury came in Thursday morning, the State called Mehnaz Chowdhury. She chose to affirm rather than swear on the Bible, spelled her name for the court reporter, and told the jury she has been at the State Crime Lab since February 2013. She spent seven and a half years in the forensic biology section, the section that handled this case in 2017 and 2018, and now works in latent evidence. She has degrees from Meredith College and North Carolina State University and two professional certifications, and she said she has testified as an expert a "Total of 15 times." The defense did not object, and the judge, Ricardo Jensen, qualified her as an expert in forensic biology.

Her job, back then, was the first look. Evidence comes in from law enforcement, gets a lab case number, and moves through the building on a tracked electronic chain of custody. An analyst like her opens a package, initials and dates it, examines the item for signs of body fluids, and decides what gets cut or swabbed and sent upstairs for DNA. She did not do any DNA analysis herself. That matters for everything that came after her.

She did two case records. The first, released in December 2017, covered the hospital evidence kit, the swabs and slides collected from Paitin at the hospital. She screened them with a chemical test and looked at the slides under a microscope. Every result was negative. She was careful to tell the jury what that kind of screen is and is not: "It is not a confirmatory test, it's a presumptive test." It tells an analyst something may be there. It does not prove it.

Her second case record, released March 20, 2018, covered clothing and bedding: a pair of blue child's pants, a pink child's blanket, a pair of blue men's boxer shorts, a set of red earbuds, two bed sheets and a tan pillowcase. For blood she used what is called the Kastle-Meyer test, a chemical that turns hot pink when it touches something that may be blood. Again she drew the line clearly: "It does not confirm blood." The lab does not run a confirmatory blood test unless someone specifically asks, she explained, partly to save as much of the stain as possible for DNA and partly because the presumptive test cannot tell human blood from animal blood.

Here is what she found. The child's pants and the blanket showed no visible stains, and the screen under an alternate light source came back negative, so there was no blood test on either. The boxer shorts gave presumptive indications of blood, and she cut three pieces from them for DNA, two from the back and one from the front. On the earbuds she did no body-fluid testing at all. She took a swab for what the lab calls touch DNA, the skin cells a person can leave behind by handling something, because, as she put it, "it was requested that a collection for what we call epithelial cells be taken." And she swabbed the cord, not the earbuds themselves: "I swabbed along that stretch of cord."

The bedding is where I want you to slow down. On the white sheet she marked and screened 192 separate areas. Three of them gave indications of blood. The gray and white sheet had two more, and the pillowcase had three. Then the prosecutor asked her whether those bedding stains would have been sent on for further testing at the time.

Those stains sat. They were not cut for DNA until 2021, by the third analyst of the day. The jury was not told why they were held back in 2018, who decided it, or what changed three years later. I am not suggesting anything sinister in that. Labs triage, and somebody decides what gets tested first. But in a case whose central question is why it took four years to charge a man, the fact that the bedding was not even sent for DNA in the first round is part of the answer, and the jury deserves to know whose call it was.

Luther Johnson Britt III, David Prevatte's lawyer, crossed her briefly, and he went straight at the limits of what she could say. Did any of the lab's submission forms ask for saliva or urine to be identified? "Uh no, we don't test for those at our laboratory." The kit swabs, he established, were tested only for the one body fluid the screen looks for, and never for blood. Then the boxers.

Could she say when the blood on them was deposited?

He asked the same about the sheets and the pillowcase, and got the same answer. And he made her say it one more time about the earbuds: she swabbed the cord, sent the swab to the DNA section, and did not test it herself.

On redirect, the State did what it should have done and got the other half on the record. Nobody can see touch DNA on a swab, she agreed. If any cell carrying DNA was transferred onto an item, it could be there. Then she stepped down from the stand, held up the boxers for the jury and showed them where her three cuttings came from: two areas on the back, one on the front. She was released, and the jury took its morning break.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 27, THE FIRST LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE Uncle on Trial Lab Analyst Finds Blood Signs on Boxers and Bedding but Can't Say When

Take stock of what one witness gave the jury. Every screen of the hospital evidence kit was negative. Every blood result she reported is presumptive and undated. The bedding was not sent on. The lab does not test for saliva or urine at all. Nothing she did pointed at any person. The State needed her for the chain, to get the boxer cuttings and the earbud-cord swab into evidence and into the DNA section's hands, and it got that. But the defense walked away from her with more than the State did.

2018: his DNA, and hers on nothing interpretable

After the break the State called Kristin Meyer, who spent about 14 or 15 years as a DNA analyst at the State Crime Lab before leaving in January 2019. She works now for a company in Durham called BioAgilytix. She has a biology degree from Northeastern University and a master's in forensic science from George Washington University, and she said she has testified "Between fifteen and sixty times." When the State tendered her as an expert in forensic DNA analysis, the defense answered, "Nope, Judge." I did not hear the court rule on the tender on the record before her testimony went on. Nobody objected, so it may not matter, but I note it because the qualification of an expert is the court's call, and this one was never said out loud.

She gave the jury the plainest explanation of DNA anyone has given in this trial. You get half from your mother and half from your father. It does not change over your lifetime. And "the DNA that's found in blood is the same DNA that's found in saliva and skin cells." Hold on to that last line. It is the whole reason a DNA result, by itself, cannot tell you what kind of contact put it there.

She wrote two case records, three and five. Case record three, released Jan. 11, 2018, started with the hospital evidence kit and swabs and scrapings from Paitin's hands. She was looking for male DNA. On a handful of those swabs the lab's measuring step showed what might have been male DNA, but in amounts below the threshold the lab requires to go further, and she was precise about what that means: "I can't definitively say that there's male DNA if I don't move it all the way forward." No male profile came off the kit.

Then the items that did produce profiles. The nozzle of a whipped cream can and the scrapings from under David Prevatte's own nails each gave a single profile that matched his, with Paitin and Dale Hunt excluded. The odds of a random unrelated person matching, she said, were about 1 in 814 octillion in the Caucasian population. A swab taken from him at the hospital gave a three-person mixture with a major profile that matched none of the standards the lab had at the time.

Case record five, released April 25, 2018, added four more standards: Jamie Sykes, Melissa Brown (now Melissa Helms) and Michael Hall, the three people who were with David on the evening of Nov. 12, 2017, and who testified on Day 5, and Haley Fawcett. Fawcett is the young woman Sykes described on Day 5 as David's on-and-off girlfriend. With her standard in hand, Meyer could name the major profile on the swab taken from him at the hospital.

Then she worked the boxer cuttings Chowdhury had sent up, a cell phone charger cord, the earbud-cord swab and a set of household cords. On one boxer cutting, a four-person mixture, David Prevatte was the major contributor. On a second boxer cutting and the phone charger, both two-person mixtures, he was the major contributor too. On the earbud swab, a three-person mixture, the major profile matched him, at the same 1 in 814 octillion. Paitin was excluded from the major profile on every one of those. In every mixture, the minor contributors, the other people whose DNA was in there, were inconclusive. She could not say who they were, and she could not say who they were not.

Some items gave her nothing she could read at all: the third boxer cutting, two other phone chargers, a vacuum cleaner cord, and item 18, a set of Christmas lights with its cord. And on item 19, a hot glue gun cord, she could interpret one major profile out of at least four people, and it matched nobody whose standard she had. David Prevatte and Paitin were both excluded from it. I will come back to those two cords, because the State's third witness changed what we know about them, and they are easy to confuse.

Britt's cross took about a minute. He asked one real question.

Out of everything she tested for DNA, did she find Paitin Fields' DNA profile on any of it?

He let her say it again in her own words, "I did not make any associations with Paitin Fields' known DNA profile in anything that I was able to interpret in my case records," and sat down.

The State's redirect was fair, and the jury should weigh it. The contributors she could not interpret, she agreed, could have been anyone, Paitin included: "They could be contributors or they could have been excluded. I can't interpret the profile, so either way." She added that body fluids such as blood and saliva are the best sources of DNA, and that skin cells give DNA in amounts "not as robust as if you had a blood stain." On a short recross, partly garbled on the record, Britt asked whether the material she received from the Pender County Sheriff's Office had told her a particular thing about that night. "I don't believe I had any information like that." She was released.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 28, THE 2018 DNA REPORTS DNA Analyst Tells Uncle on Trial Jury Paitin Fields' DNA Was on Nothing She Could Interpret

So here is where the case stood in April 2018, by the State's own lab. David Prevatte's DNA was the major profile on two boxer cuttings, a phone charger and the earbud-cord swab, and the only profile on the nozzle and his own nail scrapings. That is a clear answer about whose DNA it is. The major profile on the swab taken from him belonged to his girlfriend. No male profile came off the kit. And Paitin was on nothing Meyer could interpret. His DNA on things from the house where he lived tells you his DNA was on those things. It does not tell you how it got there, or what happened that night, and Meyer was never asked to say it did.

That was the State's DNA in 2018, the year he was named a suspect. It did not lead to a charge. Whatever moved this case afterward, it was not in these two reports.

The third analyst, and the software the lab did not have in 2018

The State then called Shane Wilcox, a forensic scientist three at the State Crime Lab since August 2015, with degrees from the University of New Haven and the University of Connecticut. He has testified "Twenty-seven times." The defense did not object, and the judge qualified him in DNA, DNA analysis and body fluid identification.

Before he gave a single result, Wilcox told the jury what had changed at the lab. The base process is the same, he said, and Meyer used the same amplification kit he used. What is different is the software that reads mixtures, the profiles with more than one person in them. Meyer worked with a program called ArmedXpert. By the time Wilcox picked up this case, the lab had moved to STRmix, which he described as software that "uses all of the information available in the profile," where the older program left much more on the analyst. He believed the lab began using it "about 2020."

He also gave the jury two things worth keeping in mind for the rest of the day. Skin cells can leave DNA, but how much "depends on how long you touched an item," on the person and on the surface. And heat, sun, bacteria, soap and water all break DNA down or wash it away. His CV and a disc of his five case records, eight through twelve, went into evidence, and the court broke for lunch before he gave any results.

2021: the bedding, finally cut

Court resumed in the afternoon with the second prosecutor, Mr. Smith, walking Wilcox through case record eight, released Feb. 3, 2021. This is the bedding and clothing Chowdhury had flagged in 2018, now cut for DNA almost three years later.

He was candid about how an analyst picks where to cut. He looks for the center of a stain, he said, and "honestly it's a training experience thing." And he was candid about blood. He ran no confirmatory test. "DNA testing is human-specific. So while I cannot say it is human blood, we got a positive result with the presumptive tests, and then we have a human DNA profile." The jury should hear that sentence for exactly what it is: a reason the lab reads a positive screen plus a human profile as good enough, and an admission that no one confirmed these stains are blood.

He also explained how the lab now reports a result. It is a likelihood ratio: how many times more likely the DNA is if it came from a named person and unknown others than if it came from unknown people alone. The bigger the number, the stronger the support for including that person. Anything between one-thousandth and one thousand the lab reports as inconclusive, neither in nor out. And he explained that the lab never says a profile belongs to a particular person; its language is "included as a possible contributor."

Then the results, and for the defense this was the best stretch of the day.

On the white sheet, one cutting included Haley Fawcett, at least 122 octillion times more likely, and excluded David Prevatte. The State had him agree there are not even one octillion people on earth: "I believe the current world population is about 8 billion." A second cutting from the same sheet included Paitin and excluded him. The gray and white sheet did not have enough DNA to go on. On the tan pillowcase, one cutting included Paitin, with Dale and Lisa Hunt, her grandparents, inconclusive, and David Prevatte excluded. The other two pillowcase cuttings held an unknown person whose profile matched no standard on file, David Prevatte's included.

A pair of red men's underwear included Dale and Lisa Hunt, and excluded David Prevatte. A blue shirt gave one cutting that included Paitin and excluded him, and a second cutting too complex to read, past the lab's limit of four contributors. A purple top was too complex. A third shirt gave nothing to test.

One item from that report went the other way. On a tan canvas belt, where neither suspect area tested positive for blood, he swabbed the entire surface. That four-person mixture included Haley Fawcett and David Prevatte, him as the second contributor at least 395 sextillion times more likely, and excluded Paitin.

Look at the bedding as a whole, because this is the evidence that was not even sent for DNA in 2018. The sheets and the pillowcase from that house carry Paitin, Fawcett, her grandparents and people nobody has identified. On every interpretable result from that bedding, David Prevatte is excluded.

The re-read: same swab, new answer

Case record nine, released June 9, 2021, is the one that turned the day. It did two things. It added three new standards: Jordan Swenson and Larry Huggins, two early leads a detective swabbed back in 2017, as the jury heard on Day 5, and Savannah Fields, Paitin's older sister, who was seven that night. And it took the data Meyer had generated in 2018, with no new swab and no new handling of the evidence, and ran it through STRmix.

Most of that changed nothing. The new standards were excluded from the nozzle, the nail scrapings, the swab taken from him at the hospital, the boxer cuttings, the phone charger, the underwear and the shirt. Meyer's findings stood. Then the State asked about item 10-1, the earbud-cord swab, the item the State told jurors in its opening to watch.

Wilcox was clear that he never touched the earbuds. He did not take the swab and did not take a new one. He took the 2018 data out of the lab's system and read it with the new software. Here is what came back. The three-person mixture now had two readable contributors instead of one. David Prevatte was included as the first, at least 4.74 octillion times more likely. And Paitin Fields was included as the second, at least 1.61 billion times more likely.

In April 2018, on that same swab, Paitin had been excluded from the major profile and the rest of the mixture could not be read. In June 2021, reading the same data, she was in it.

WATCH: DAY 6 CLIP, THE DNA RE-READ Uncle on Trial: Crime Lab DNA Re-Read Excludes David Prevatte From the Sheet but Not the Earbuds

I want to be fair to that result, in both directions. The State is entitled to say that better software found a person the old software could not see, and that this is exactly what modern DNA analysis is for. That is a legitimate argument, and the lab's own witness explained why the new program reads more. The defense is entitled to point out that her figure, 1.61 billion, is a long way below his octillions on the same swab, that Wilcox reported Lisa Hunt and Savannah Fields as ones he could reach no conclusion on for that swab, and that nobody tested what the DNA came from. Both of those are true at once. A jury can hold both.

Two cords, never one

This is the part of Day 6 most likely to get scrambled in the retelling, so I am going to be careful. There are two cords in this evidence, and they are two different items with two different results.

Item 18 is a set of Christmas lights with its cord. In 2018 Meyer could not interpret anything on it. On the 2021 re-read it became a four-person mixture that includes Savannah Fields, who best fits the first contributor (at least 55.7 octillion times more likely), and Paitin Fields (at least 16 sextillion). David Prevatte is excluded.

Item 19 is a hot glue gun with its cord. In 2018 Meyer read one major profile on it that matched no standard she had, and excluded David Prevatte and Paitin from it. On the 2021 re-read, the one readable component best fits Savannah Fields (at least 517 octillion). Swenson and Huggins were excluded, and the other three components were inconclusive.

So neither cord carries David Prevatte's DNA. One includes both sisters. The other's readable part fits Savannah. Anyone who tells you the unknown person on the glue gun cord in 2018 turned out to be Savannah is going further than the witness did. What the record says is that the 2021 read of that swab fits her best. Keep them apart.

The re-read also included Savannah on all three pillowcase cuttings. Then came item 28, a swab from a couch cushion, and the weakest number of the day. A four-person mixture, with David Prevatte included as the second contributor at "at least 445,000 times more likely." Every other inclusion of him all day was in the sextillions or higher. This one is in the hundreds of thousands, and Paitin, along with most of the other standards, could not be called either way. When the prosecutor first asked about the item, Wilcox said, "I do not believe that I've worked item 28." He then agreed he had run its profile against all the standards. The jury did not hear who collected that swab or when.

Late in the afternoon the jury took a fifteen-minute break.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 29, THE RE-READ New Software Includes Paitin Fields Beside the Uncle on Trial on the 2018 Earbud Swab

One pair of tan pants

Before the jury came back, the lawyers agreed Wilcox would finish that day, and the judge later told the jurors they would stay past five if they had to, because there is no court on Friday.

Then the pants. Item 34 is a pair of tan men's work pants, which the State showed the jury as State's Exhibit 39. Wilcox described them from his photograph as "a pair of tan khaki-ish pants with some staining on the front." And he told the jury something I think is the most important procedural fact of the day. He did not test those pants for blood or any other body fluid. Asked what kind of analysis he did:

Why only that? "Uh in this case record, I believe I was contacted and requested for specific areas of the pants to be swabbed." He swabbed rather than cut because he was "looking to collect potential skin cells" from a larger surface. He did not remember the specifics of how the areas were chosen, but he swabbed two of them: the inside of the waistband, all the way around, and the inside of the fly and zipper. He stepped down and showed the jury on the pants themselves where each swab went.

The results are the State's strongest physical evidence of the trial so far, and I am going to give them to you straight.

Swab 34-1, the inside of the waistband: a three-person mixture including David Prevatte (at least 727 septillion), Paitin Fields (at least 3.83 quintillion) and Haley Fawcett (at least one quadrillion). Everyone else excluded.

Swab 34-2, the inside of the fly and zipper: a three-person mixture including David Prevatte (at least 36.8 septillion) and Paitin Fields (at least 684 quintillion). Fawcett excluded.

A month later came case record ten, released July 13, 2021, and its only work was two more swabs of the same pants. Why? "I was requested to swab more areas of the pants." Swab 34-3, the outside of the fly flap, included David Prevatte and Paitin together, by a figure heard in court as 67.8 quattuordecillion. Swab 34-4, one swab run over both upper thighs, included the two of them again, heard as 4.35 undecillion. His photograph also showed a couple of holes in one leg, which he said he did not make.

Four swabs of one pair of pants, inside the waistband, inside and outside the fly, and the thighs, and every one of them includes Paitin and David Prevatte. I am not going to dress that up or down. For a jury, that is a hard result to set aside. It is the first evidence in this trial that puts her DNA and his on the same object in more than one place.

The rest of case record nine was smaller. A nylon rope bracelet had too little DNA. And item 39 was a filter from an M-Vac, a wet-vacuum collection device that pulls material off a surface, labeled as read in court as taken from a brown cloth belt. The State Crime Lab does not use the device; Wilcox knows it only "through a presentation." That four-person mixture included Haley Fawcett and David Prevatte, him as the second contributor at least 177 quadrillion times more likely.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 30, THE PANTS AND THE CROSS DNA Analyst Puts the Uncle on Trial and Paitin Fields on Four Swabs of One Pair of Pants

The blanket, and the father's standard

Case record eleven, released Nov. 30, 2021, was the pink child's blanket, which Lisa Hunt handed over to investigators, as the jury heard on Day 4. Chowdhury had found no stains on it in 2018 and done no blood test. Wilcox found five areas that screened positive for blood and took three cuttings. Paitin and Savannah were included. David Prevatte was excluded from every one. Same blanket, two looks: no visible stains in 2018, five areas that screened for blood in 2021. The jury did not hear anything that explains the difference.

Case record twelve, released May 31, 2022, did one thing: it added a standard from Robert Fields, Paitin and Savannah's father, and compared it against everything. He was included on two of the blanket cuttings and on one pillowcase cutting alongside Savannah. He was inconclusive on the Christmas lights cord. And he was excluded from everything else, including all four pants swabs, the belt, the couch cushion and the filter.

The State used that to make a point about how precise the work is, and Wilcox closed his direct by explaining masking: relatives share DNA, and on a profile with information missing, two siblings, or a father and daughter, can fit the same slot. One peak on the graph "doesn't mean that that peak belongs to only one individual." The lab could tell the Fields family apart from David Prevatte, and the State wanted the jury to see that. Fair enough. Notice the date, though. The report with the father's standard was released in May 2022, after David Prevatte had been charged.

Britt's cross: whose, not how

Britt's cross of Wilcox was short and organized, and every question went to the same gap: DNA says whose, not how or when.

He started with that last report, asking why Robert Fields' DNA was needed at all. "I was asked to compare that profile. I do not know the reason why it was submitted." He had Wilcox confirm David Prevatte was excluded from the blanket.

Then he put the defense's account of the night in front of the jury, inside a question. I want to be exact about this, because it is easy to misreport. Britt asked whether Wilcox had ever been given information that, on the ride to the hospital, Paitin soiled David. On Day 6 that came only as the defense's question, not as testimony from this witness. The account itself is already in the record from another day: Dale Hunt, Paitin's grandfather and David's stepfather, testified on Day 2 that Paitin soiled herself on the drive to the hospital and that David said, "Daddy, let's go." Wilcox's answer was only about what he had been told: "I was told that information at some point, yes." He did not say when he was told, or whether it shaped what he tested.

The waistband swab? The whole inside band was swabbed as one area, so he could not narrow the DNA to the front, the back or a side. The belt? It included Fawcett and David Prevatte and excluded Paitin. The earbuds? He did not take that swab, he did not know exactly where on the item it was taken beyond what he heard that morning, and he could not say what the DNA came from, blood, saliva or skin: "I did not perform any body fluid personally, so I I cannot say."

And then the last question. Very few of the items had David and Paitin together as contributors.

There were items with him and not her, he agreed, and items with her and not him. The State asked no redirect. Wilcox was released, and the judge sent the jury home until Monday morning at 9:30.

That cross is the defense's answer to the pants, and it is a coherent one. Every pants swab was DNA only, with no test of what the DNA came from, taken over a whole area with no location inside it. The earbuds were never tested for a body fluid. Very few items carry the two of them together. And the account in Britt's question offers a way for her DNA to end up on his clothing that does not require the act he is charged with. On Day 6 that account came only in a question, and a question is not evidence. But it does not rest on the question alone: Dale Hunt testified to the soiling on Day 2. What no Day 6 witness did is tie that account to where the DNA sits on the pants.

Who asked, and why then?

Now put the dates the lab gave the jury in a row, because on Thursday they told a story of their own.

November 2017: the evidence is collected. December 2017 and March 2018: the first analyst screens it, and the bedding stains are not sent on. January and April 2018: the second analyst's DNA reports. His DNA on things from the house, his girlfriend's as the major profile on the swab taken from him, no male profile from the kit, and Paitin on nothing interpretable. In 2018 he is named a suspect, and he is not charged.

February 2021: the bedding is finally cut, and it excludes him. June 2021: the 2018 earbud data is re-read on new software and now includes Paitin, Savannah's standard is added, and the tan pants are swabbed for DNA, on a request for "specific areas." July 2021: more of the pants are swabbed, on another request. November 2021: the blanket. Then, in 2022, he is charged, and in May of that year the father's standard is reported.

Every result the jury heard that includes both Paitin and David Prevatte on the same object comes from June and July of 2021. That is the State's evidence, and it is real evidence. It also tells the jury something about the question this case has carried from the start, the four years between naming him and charging him. Part of the answer, on the State's own record, is that the work that links them was not done until 2021.

What the record does not tell anyone is why it was done then. Wilcox said he was "contacted and requested" to swab specific areas of the pants. He did not say by whom, and nobody asked him. He did not know why the father's standard was submitted. Day 6 did not say when the pants first reached the lab, or who decided in 2021 that the earbud data should go through the new software, or why the bedding waited three years. Those are not accusations. A cold case gets new eyes, and new eyes ask for new tests; that happens, and it can be entirely proper. But the jury is being asked to decide whether investigators found the truth or fixed on a 19-year-old early, and how the 2021 requests came about is evidence on exactly that question. If the State's last witnesses can answer it, they should. If the defense thinks the answer helps David Prevatte, it should be asking.

Then there is what each side promised. In its opening, the State told jurors to pay attention to a pair of red earbuds. Day 6 showed why: on the re-read, the swab from the earbuds includes both Paitin and David Prevatte. The numbers are enormous, and the State's three analysts were careful and straightforward. In its opening, the defense told jurors that what happened on the drive to the hospital explains any mixture of the two people's DNA on the clothing. On Day 6, that account appeared only inside a question; the testimony behind it came on Day 2, from Dale Hunt. And no scientist has yet told the jury how the DNA got where it is. The State's own experts said they could not tell the jury that. Meyer said DNA is the same whether it comes from blood, saliva or skin. Chowdhury said she could not date a single stain. Wilcox said he could not say what the earbud DNA came from, and could not place the waistband DNA anywhere on the band. Whose DNA is a question science can answer. How it got there is a question the jury will have to answer from everything else.

Where Day 6 leaves the case

My read, and it is only a read: the State left Day 6 in a stronger position than it entered. For five days this case rested on timelines, interviews and the gap between 2018 and 2022. On Thursday the jury got its first DNA result linking David Prevatte and Paitin, on the earbuds and in four places on one pair of pants. A jury takes that seriously, and the defense has not yet given it a witness for an innocent explanation.

The defense has a real answer, and it is all on the State's own record. In 2018 the State's analyst found Paitin on nothing she could interpret. Every screen of the hospital evidence kit was negative. Every blood result is presumptive and undated. The bedding, the pillowcase, the blanket, the underwear, both cords and the shirts all exclude him. The major profile on the swab taken from him is his girlfriend's. Nothing was tested to show whether the DNA came from blood, saliva or skin, and the State's analyst agreed very few items have the two of them together. Britt also brought the defense's account of the drive to the hospital back in front of the jury, in a question, and it has a witness behind it: Dale Hunt testified on Day 2 that Paitin soiled herself on the drive. Whether the jury connects that account to the DNA on the pants may decide this case.

With the jury gone, the State told the judge what is left: a witness from Charlotte on Monday morning, then an out-of-state analyst it described as its concluding witness, with both expected to finish Monday or Tuesday at the latest. So the State is one or two witnesses from resting. If that last analyst explains where the 2021 requests came from, the jury will finally hear the piece of this case that has been missing since 2018. If not, the defense will have its turn, and we will find out whether it puts on a case at all.

David Prevatte is presumed innocent. The jury has heard the State's case through Thursday and none of the defense's. There is no court on Friday. Court resumes Monday, Oct. 12, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

WATCH LIVE: DAY 7, COURT RESUMES 9:30 AM ET MONDAY, OCT. 12 Watch Day 7 of the uncle's trial live with Justice

The whole day, your way

If you want every minute of Thursday, the full live broadcast carries it all, and the No Breaks Edition premieres Friday morning. Top Moments, my Day 6 reflection, the full testimonies of Mehnaz Chowdhury, Kristin Meyer and Shane Wilcox, and clips from the day are still on their way to the channel. They will all be on the Prevatte coverage page as they go up.

WATCH: DAY 6 FULL LIVE BROADCAST LIVE: The Uncle on Trial - NC v. David Prevatte - Day 6 WATCH: DAY 6 NO BREAKS EDITION, PREMIERES 9:30 AM ET FRIDAY, OCT. 9 The Uncle on Trial Day 6, No Breaks Edition: Three Crime Lab Analysts Walk the Jury Through the DNA

From Day 5

These went up after our Day 5 article, or are booked to, and they belong with it: my Day 5 reflection, four full testimonies and four clips.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 26, JUSTICE'S DAY 5 REFLECTION Uncle on Trial: What Was the Medical Purpose of Paitin Fields' Sister's 2022 Interview? WATCH: DAY 5 FULL TESTIMONY, JULIE OZIER The Uncle on Trial: Interviewer Who Questioned Paitin Fields' Sister Three Times, Full Testimony WATCH: DAY 5 FULL TESTIMONY, DET. ERIC KELLEY, LIVE 1:30 PM ET FRIDAY, OCT. 9 Enhanced or Altered? The Detective Who Brightened the Photos WATCH: DAY 5 CLIP, THE ENHANCED PHOTOS RULING, LIVE 10:00 AM ET SATURDAY, OCT. 10 Uncle on Trial: Judge Allows the Detective's Enhanced Photos but the Jury Gets the Originals Too WATCH: DAY 5 FULL TESTIMONY, DET. STEVE CLINARD, LIVE 1:30 PM ET SATURDAY, OCT. 10 Detective Who Swabbed the Neighbors in 2017 WATCH: DAY 5 CLIP, WHAT THE SISTER WAS TOLD, LIVE 4:00 PM ET SATURDAY, OCT. 10 Uncle on Trial: Interviewer Says the Team Decided to Tell Paitin Fields' Sister Someone Hurt Her WATCH: DAY 5 CLIP, THE WITNESS KEPT OFF CAMERA, LIVE 10:00 AM ET SUNDAY, OCT. 11 Uncle on Trial: Witness Kept Off Camera Says She Dropped David Prevatte Home Around 10 PM WATCH: DAY 5 FULL TESTIMONY, MARY BETH BARNA, LIVE 1:30 PM ET SUNDAY, OCT. 11 The Nurse Who Examined Paitin Fields' Sister Found No Injury WATCH: DAY 5 CLIP, THE RUINED COMPUTER, LIVE 4:00 PM ET SUNDAY, OCT. 11 Uncle on Trial: Retired Detective Says the Computer in the Warrant Was Ruined, Its Data Corrupted