|
Please see our “Did You Know?” section toward the end of this issue. In the news, the Commission on Fair Administration of Justice in California issued a report calling for better forensic training and a set of standards for analysis and handling of evidence. In Washington, a case where a suspect was ‘tricked’ into providing a DNA sample raised controversy. By a 6-3 vote, the state Supreme Court agreed that the decision by detectives to pose as lawyers was a minor offense, “justified by the success in bringing a killer to justice.” Following these stories we are including a number of new and ongoing cases involving the use of DNA evidence. California panel calls for better forensic training Forensic errors are a major contributor to wrongful convictions, according to a California commission, prompting it to call for better training. The report, the fifth of its kind from the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, cited the Innocence Project at New York's Cardozo Law School, which identified forensic science testing errors in 63 percent of a set of nationwide DNA exoneration cases analyzed, the Los Angeles Times reported. The commission has sounded warnings about false confessions, DNA backlogs in crime labs, the use of police informants and mistaken eyewitness identifications. It has also raised a red flag over the ability of the criminal justice system to expose mistakes in scientific evidence, the Times said. The report called for the creation of a commission to set standards for analysis and handling of evidence. The Times also reported that the commission recommended that local prosecutors look into allegations of irregularities in expert testimony and that a council set state standards for forensic experts. The commission is made up of 20 members, including academics, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges. It is chaired by former state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref01.html Trick to get suspect’s DNA raises concerns Washington - It was portrayed by the cops and the news media as ingenious detective work, worthy of TV’s “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” Seattle detectives working on cold cases took advantage of improved testing methods to get DNA evidence in a 1982 rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. But the sample didn’t match any in the state’s growing database of felons. So to see if the sample matched a possible suspect – a neighbor of the victim – they sent the man a letter from a phony law firm inviting him to join a class-action suit over parking tickets. When he replied, they took the envelope sealed with the man’s saliva and scored a match. John Nicholas Athan was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Kristen Sumstad. The DNA evidence was the key to the conviction, with the state arguing that Athan gave his saliva freely and did not have a privacy interest in it anyway. Breaking state law by posing as lawyers was a minor offense, justified by the success in bringing a killer to justice. By a 6-3 vote, the state Supreme Court agreed. “The facts of this situation are analogous to a person spitting on the sidewalk or leaving a cigarette butt in an ashtray,” wrote Justice Charles Johnson for the majority. And “although the ruse used by detectives in this case violated certain statutes, it was not so outrageous or shocking to warrant dismissing the case.” But the dissenting opinions – and even one of the concurring opinions – pointed out some disturbing trends in the decision that threaten more than a single conviction in an admittedly ugly crime. Privacy rights that are more-strongly protected in our state Constitution than in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were battered by the court. In her dissent, Justice Mary Fairhurst scolded the majority for focusing on saliva when the real issue was the DNA contained within. “Under the majority’s holding, the government could analyze the DNA in anyone’s saliva, however obtained, as long as it was not directly from the person’s mouth, and use the information to construct a DNA database that includes both felons and nonfelons,” she wrote. The answer, as with any other request by government to search someone’s property, is a warrant from a judge. But the only rationale as to why the police didn’t take that path was a fleeting suggestion that because the suspect had relatives in Greece, he was a flight risk. But after his arrest, the police used a court order to obtain a second DNA sample that confirmed the results of the first. As noted, the state Constitution provides Washingtonians with stronger privacy protections than do other states. Under those protections, the state Supreme Court has already ruled that cops can’t – without court approval – use a Global Positioning System to follow a suspect’s car, use infrared devices to view inside someone’s house, search the contents of garbage left on the curb or use a device that collects all phone numbers dialed. Even while agreeing with the outcome of the case, Chief Justice Gerry Alexander was surprised at the majority’s dismissal of DNA privacy: “It is hard for me to imagine that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his garbage, but he does not have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in his body makeup.” A second dissent, written by Justice Tom Chambers and endorsed by Justice Richard Sanders, accepted Fairhurst’s analysis of the privacy issue. But Chambers also was disturbed by police posing as attorneys. That, he wrote, violates attorney-client privilege, a basic premise of American justice. It also says it’s OK to break the law to capture a lawbreaker. Wrote Chambers: “As Justice (Louis) Brandeis warned us long ago, ‘crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.’” Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref02.html New and ongoing cases involving the use of DNA evidence include: New York - Astronomical DNA odds led a Rochester man to admit Friday that he killed another man and wounded a woman in unrelated shootings six weeks apart last summer. Kevin R. Lewis, 26, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the Aug. 18, 2006, slaying of Leroy Buggs, 24, on Dewey Avenue, and attempted second-degree murder in the July 7, 2006, wounding of Deanna Durden on Marlborough Street. Lewis will receive a prison sentence of 25 years to life. Missouri - Jackson County jurors relied on DNA evidence to convict a Kansas City man Friday for strangling a woman 17 years ago. The verdict ends a serial killer’s career, prosecutors say. Clifton Ray’s only possible sentence for first-degree murder is life without parole. Three years ago, he was about to be paroled after a 1995 murder conviction for strangling his neighbor, but prosecutors used DNA evidence to charge him with the 1987 murder of Deborah Taylor and the 1990 murder of Joycie Flowers. Both cases involved strangled women with semen in or on them that matched Ray’s DNA. The Flowers case went to trial this week. The Taylor case is pending. Ray is a suspect in about six other murders. After the verdict Friday, a prosecutor informed jurors that Ray’s DNA matched that on Taylor and yet another victim, but charges could not be filed in that case because samples mistakenly were destroyed. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref05.html New York- For the first time, Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark is revealing key evidence that linked the now-confessed killer Altemio Sanchez to the murder of Clarence mother Joan Diver. District Attorney Frank Clark says the only DNA evidence from Altemio Sanchez in the Joan Diver murder was a droplet of his sweat on the steering column of her SUV. Clark said, "So that we knew that, at some point in time, he was in the car, and we believed that the car was moved." But, months later, after his arrest was all over the news, a clerk at Hector's Hardware recognized the face from a sale she made in early fall. She remembered selling a piece of braided metal cord to a man who looked like Sanchez. It stuck in her mind because he only bought four feet of it. Clark said, "We were wonderfully fortunate that this person came forward." Prosecutors used computer technology to compare the type of cord with the marks on Diver's neck. Clark said, "It was frightening to see that strangulation in 1990, and strangulation in 2006, as far as the neck imprints were concerned, were almost exactly the same." And there's one other thing the D.A. wants to get off his chest about the retesting of Sanchez's DNA. Clark said, "You know, everybody was saying, 'Oh, you're the buckle swab, and why are you retesting it?' " He says that second swab was taken to bolster DNA taken in 1990 from murder victim Linda Yalem. Clark said, "And we took those numbers, which started out as one in 200,000, and we brought them into the trillions. ... The degree of certainty was astronomical." If Sanchez does end up admitting to any other crimes, Clark says he will not waver from asking for anything less than 75 years to life in jail, but he says the judge could take it into consideration, and slightly reduce that sentence. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref06.html New York - Evidence from a national DNA database has linked a soon-to-be-paroled New Jersey inmate to the unsolved 1996 rape of a Queens woman, a prosecutor said Friday. Missouri - A DNA sample from a Missouri inmate matched evidence from a rape last year of a 35-year-old woman inside her Kansas City home, prosecutors announced Friday. One man had already been charged in the Jan. 25, 2006, attack. He was an acquaintance of the victim’s son. Police did not know the identity of the second man who barged into her unlocked home and raped and sodomized her. The two men also poured bleach and rubbing alcohol on the victim in a failed attempt to destroy evidence. The men — one of whom had a gun — then walked through the house carrying trash bags, which they loaded with clothes from her children’s rooms, an Xbox and several frozen food items. The men then found her $935 paycheck and forced her to drive to a credit union to cash it. They made her drive to 42nd Street and Olive Avenue, where they jumped out and ran south on Olive. Police collected evidence from the victim at a hospital and entered it into a national DNA database. In February, DNA from the evidence was linked to an inmate, Jon M. Vaughns, 19. Detectives confronted Vaughns at a St. Joseph prison and he denied knowing or having sexual relations with the victim. He agreed to provide a DNA sample, which the crime lab confirmed matched DNA from evidence left on the victim, according to court records. Prosecutors on Friday announced 11 felony charges against Vaughns: rape, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, two counts of sodomy and five counts of armed criminal action. His co-defendant, O’Brian L. Jones, 19, faces 10 felony charges. The victim recognized him as an acquaintance of her son who had called her house recently. Police traced the phone number to Jones, according to court records. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref08.html Tennessee - In Oklahoma City (last week) Curtis Edward McCarty, who was convicted twice and sentenced to death for the same murder in verdicts that were both thrown out based on evidence of his innocence and an extraordinary pattern of government misconduct, was released from prison after a judge dismissed the indictment against him that would have led to a third trial. The prosecution said that it will not appeal the decision – finally clearing McCarty after 21 years of wrongful incarceration, more than 16 of them on death row. McCarty becomes the 201st prisoner in America freed from prison due to DNA testing, and the 124th death row exoneree nationally. In the modern execution era, there have been 1075 executions, including the most recent execution of Philip Workman in Tennessee early Wednesday morning. In that same period of time, 124 inmates have been exonerated from death row. This represents more than 1 exoneration for every 9 executions. “For anyone who believes that the death penalty is administered fairly and accurately, exonerees like Curtis McCarty, and inmates like Paul House who are still waiting for justice, should serve as a wake up call,” said Wiesendanger. “With innocent lives at stake, Tennesseans cannot afford to believe that our system is working perfectly. We need a complete study of Tennessee’s death penalty immediately.” Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref09.html Pennsylvania - New Castle police said they have solved two old burglary cases through DNA technology. An East Side man is charged in connection with the break-ins at Central Heating at 925 Moravia St. and at Elliott Brothers Steel at 1038 N. Cedar St., after police matched his DNA with that found at the scenes. Albert E. Jackson, 48, of 217 N. Crawford Ave., was charged yesterday with two counts each of burglary, theft and receiving stolen property. He is accused of having burglarized Central Heating on March 25, 2004, and of breaking into Elliott Brothers Steel on July 23, 2000. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. Police said a window at Central Heating was broken in that incident, an office was ransacked and $200 was missing from a cash drawer. Police found blood stains in two locations and took samples of them at the time for crime lab analysis. In the Elliott Brothers Steel break-in, the office was ransacked and items valued around $1,667 were reported missing. including a fax machine and computer equipment. Police found a work glove at the scene that they processed for DNA samples. DNA profiles from both crime scenes and were entered into a national DNA database, but no matches for either incident were found at the time, police said. On Jan. 31, police were notified that DNA extracted from the blood samples at Central Heating and from sweat from the glove found at Elliott Brothers Steel matched DNA from Jackson, who had been convicted of a felony. As a result, officers served search warrants on Jackson to obtain samples of his saliva, which were sent to the police crime lab in Greensburg. They received the final results from the lab April 12, showing Jackson is a positive match. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref10.html Kentucky - DNA could be the missing link between a conviction and a crime that occurred June 13, 2006 at Scott Market in Russellville. On the night of the robbery, a masked man entered the Scott Market at approximately 2:16 a.m. and demanded the clerk give him all the money. The clerk began to comply when the man pulled a gun out and shot at him. The clerk hit a button and threw the money at the man who then ran out of the store. The clerk was somehow unharmed. After police arrived they located a knit cap, black bandanna and a 38. caliber pistol less than 30 yards from the store behind a house. Detective Kenneth Edmonds of the Russellville Police Department was in charge of the investigation and sent the evidence off to the crime lab who extracted DNA from the cap and bandana. No prints were found on the gun but Edmonds said a strong DNA pattern was. Edmonds said this is the first time in his career that DNA has played a part in his possible solving of a crime. He said that DNA is very credible when it comes to identifying a particular individual and it is hard to escape your own pattern. Edmonds has been investigating this crime since it's occurrence but admits until recently the trail had been cold with no real leads until he received an anonymous call telling him he needed to look at Billy DeJoan Hollins. Edmonds said he knew the suspect and that although he lives in Louisville he also knew he travels to Logan County a bit to visit family. It wasn't long after the anonymous call that Edmonds received another call, only this time from authorities that said Hollins had been picked up in Smiths Grove and was lodged in the Warren County Jail. Edmonds said he was able to obtain a drinking glass that was used by Hollins in the Warren County Jail and sent the glass off to the crime lab for further DNA testing. The lab report said the DNA on the cup matched the DNA on the cap and bandana, one match out of 60 billion. Hollins was arrested, and a jury trial is scheduled for May 21. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref11.html Idaho - Another cold-case conviction in Natrona County. A jury yesterday (Monday) found 44-year-old Jeffrey L. Smith guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Tammy Dively. It's the fourth cold-case murder conviction Natrona County prosecutors have won since 2004. Dively was 25 and the mother of a 7-year-old girl when her body was found along Hat Six Road outside Casper in 1986. She had been hit in the head and run over several times with a vehicle. Investigators interviewed Smith the day after Dively was killed, but it wasn't until they matched DNA recovered at the scene to Smith's DNA that he was charged 20 years later. District Attorney Mike Blonigen says that DNA evidence was critical to the case. Defense attorney Ron Oldham wouldn't comment after the verdict was read. The jury deliberated less than three hours before returning with the verdict, which could bring a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. They're scheduled to meet again today (Tuesday) to determine whether Smith is a habitual criminal, a finding that could mean a tougher penalty. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref12.html Connecticut - Using DNA evidence obtained from the flap of an envelope, Waterford police have charged accused rapist Patrick Ludwig with attempting to intimidate his alleged victim. Ludwig, 36, of 82 Longview St., was charged with tampering with a witness when he appeared Tuesday in New London Superior Court on a charge of first-degree sexual assault. He was charged in February 2006 with sexually assaulting a neighbor after offering to look at the thermostat in her house. The woman said Ludwig forced her into her bedroom and raped her while her 2-year-old was in the home. At the time of his arrest, Ludwig was listed on the state's sex-offender registry, having been convicted in 1990 of second-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced in the earlier case to nine years in prison, suspended after 54 months served. Ludwig had posted a $150,000 bond following the February 2006 arrest and returned to his wife and children. He was instructed during several court appearances not to have contact with the victim. In the tampering case, Ludwig is accused of sending a letter to a church in Texas in May 2006 using the victim's return address. The church had moved to another address, and the letter was returned to the victim, who turned it over to police, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit. Addressed to a pastor, the letter purports to be a confession by the victim that she had wrongfully accused a man of rape. “Please help me, for I have committed a terrible act!” the letter begins. According to the affidavit, a handwriting analyst at the Connecticut Forensics Science Laborary compared the handwriting on the letter with samples of Ludwig's handwriting and determined that they matched. In addition, the lab compared the DNA sample from the envelope with a sample provided by Ludwig, which revealed “the expected frequency of individuals who could be the source of the DNA profile developed from the envelope flap was approximately one in seven billion within the Caucasian population.” Police said they also found a left thumbprint of Ludwig's on Internet articles taped to a newspaper box in his Waterford neighborhood a few days before the victim received the letter in the mail from Texas. The articles were titled, “Why would a woman lie about rape?” “Oregon Teen Sentenced for False Rape Report,” and “Judge urges false rape claim register.” On Tuesday, a bail commissioner and prosecutor John P. Gravalec-Pannone both urged Judge Susan B. Handy to impose a high bond. “This certainly strikes at the heart of the whole system, especially if someone attempts to tamper with a witness,” Pannone said. Defense attorney Linda Sullivan argued that there has been a rush to judge her client, who has been “pilloried in the community.” She said there had been “no real contact” with the alleged victim. “If a person who is accused can't proclaim his innocence, the whole system will fall apart,” she said. Handy cited the “one in 7 billion” figure from the forensics work on the envelope and several no-contact orders Ludwig had received. “Your client's DNA is on a letter that ended up with the victim,” she said. “In this court's analysis it ended up with the victim because that's where he intended it.” She raised Ludwig's bond to $700,000 and continued his case to June 14. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref13.html Colorado - Byron Halsey, 46, sat in the Union County Courthouse hand cuffed Tuesday with tears streaming down his face as a judge overturned the murder conviction of 1988 that has left Mr. Halsey locked up for the past 19 years, the New York Times reported. Mr. Halsey was convicted of two counts of felony murder and other charges in 1988. He was sentence to two life terms plus twenty years. Mr. Halsey served 19 of those sentenced years behind bars before DNA evidence proved he did not commit the crimes. In 1988 Prosecutors sought the death penalty for the brutal murders and assault on two children that took place in 1985. They were the children of the woman that Mr. Halsey lived with at the time. Margaret Urquhart's two children Tina and Tyrone were found murdered in the basement of the rooming house that Halsey and Urquhart lived in together. Tina, 7 was raped and strangled and her brother, Tyrone, 8, was found dead with four nails hammered in to his head by a brick. A judge overturned Halsey's conviction when Halsey's attorney presented DNA evidence that would have cleared him if it were available at the time of his trial. In fact the DNA evidence points to Cliff Hall who testified in Halsey's trial in 1988 against him. Hall was a neighbor of the family at the time of the murders. Hall's DNA was available for comparison since he is currently serving time for three sexual assaults. The children's mother Ms. Urquhart said, "I knew Bryon loved Tyrone and Tina. It didn't make sense to me that he could have done this. I always had my doubts, but I didn't know what to do about them. I am thankful that the DNA testing has identified who really did this to my children and the Byron is being released today. I want justice done in this case." Byron Halsey is not quite yet a free man. He was released on $55,000 bail and has to wear a tracking ankle bracelet for the next 45 days. Prosecutor's say his is still facing charges of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of aggravated manslaughter, two counts of felony murder, child abuse and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. Representatives for Mr. Halsey said that he is scheduled to return to court on July 9th when they expect Prosecutor's to drop the remaining charges. Byron Halsey's case was revived by a Manhattan legal clinic, the Innocence Project. Barry Scheck, co - director of the Innocence Project said, "It's a miracle that Byron is here with us, because if ever there was a case where there was a risk of executing an innocent man, it was this case. Because the facts of the cases were so horrible." Mr. Scheck went on to comment, "It was a minor miracle that he was not sentenced to death. At the trial, a few of the jurors just didn't believe in capital punishment." Byron Halsey contacted the Innocence Project in Manhattan after exhausting all of his appeals. Halsey's case was overturned because of advancement in DNA technology that was not available during Mr. Halsey's first trial. Mr. Scheck said that in the 201 wrongful convictions that have been overturned due to the new DNA technology, about a quarter of them had been convicted due to confessions to crimes that they had not committed. In Byron Halsey's case he committed to the crime after 30 hours of interrogation. Mr. Halsey's attorney's also said that he had a sixth grade education level and severe learning disabilities. Prosecutors said Tuesday night that they were looking into prosecuting Cliff Hall for the murder of the two young children. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref14.html Massachusetts – A teen accused of terrorizing women around the Tufts University campus in Medford and Somerville is being held without bail, a judge ruled yesterday. Police said yesterday they have DNA evidence against Nicolas Chacon, 19, of Somerville, that ties him to at least one sexual assault. During yesterday’s dangerousness hearing, Chacon’s lawyer, Jason Thomas, argued for his client’s release by saying the DNA profile didn’t specifically state Chacon is the only suspect in the case. “It says the odds of the sample not matching (Chacon) are 1 in 80 quintrillion,” said Somerville District Court Judge Maurice Flynn. “It’s got to be the longest number I’ve ever seen.” Chacon is charged with two counts of aggravated rape, assault with intent to commit rape, kidnapping, two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and five counts of indecent assault and battery. A probable cause hearing for Chacon is scheduled for June 5. Chacon was arrested on May 4. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref15.html New York - All it took was a few drops of blood to land Charles O. Sumner III under arrest. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref16.html New York - A New Jersey prisoner has been extradited to face charges in a 1996 rape in Far Rockaway, after the NYPD's Queens special victims matched his DNA to the crime, the police said. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref17.html New York - A former worker at the Center for Disability Services who willingly gave his DNA to police was charged Wednesday with raping a disabled woman -- a crime revealed this winter only when the woman was found to be pregnant, police said. Confronted with a victim unable even to report the crime against her, town detectives were forced to rely on genetic fingerprints to lead them to Dalo T. Richard, 29, of 595 Third St. in Albany, said Detective Lt. John Van Alstyne. By virtue of her disability, which authorities and center officials have declined to disclose, citing privacy laws, the victim is unable to consent to sex or even communicate that she had been raped, police said. Richard, according to his arrest report, is 6-foot-2 and weighs 385 pounds. With only a rough idea of when the woman was raped, police looked early on to collect DNA from people who might have had contact with her. Colonie Police Chief Steven Heider described Richard's role as an aide. A spokeswoman for the center, Anne Schneider Costigan, declined to discuss his employment. Van Alstyne said Richard was among the roughly dozen people who voluntarily submitted DNA samples at the request of police. At that point, this winter, he no longer worked for the center, the lieutenant said. In a letter sent to families who use the center's services, Alan Krafchin, its president and chief executive officer, said Richard "was terminated from Center employment for reasons unrelated to consumer care issues well before administrators" learned of the rape. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Times Union, was sent out Wednesday afternoon to notify families of the arrest. "Our long-standing commitment continues to be to provide the highest quality of care and services," it goes on to say. The break in the case came when the woman recently gave birth to a healthy child, Van Alstyne said. Detectives obtained a search warrant for the child's DNA and cross-checked it with that of the mother and the voluntary submissions, yielding a match with Richard, he said. The sex of the child and who was caring for it were not clear. Because the crime is a sexual assault, police have closely guarded many aspects of it, including where it is believed to have happened. Van Alstyne would say only that it happened at a facility run by the center, a not-for-profit that began in 1942 as a nursery school for children with cerebral palsy. According to its Web site, the center has 44 residential facilities to serve people with "300 different physical, neurological, cognitive, and medical disability diagnoses." Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref18.html California - A Perris man was charged with murder after DNA evidence linked him to the 1985 killing of a retired Riverside police sergeant during a holdup, authorities said. Leslie Gene Parker, 47, was arrested Thursday at his home in a mobile home park and was charged with murder during a robbery and use of a gun during the crime. He would be eligible for the death penalty if convicted, prosecutor Sara Danville said. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref19.html Pennsylvania - DNA led police to a York man accused of the December kidnapping and rape of a 15-year-old girl Hannah Penn Middle School student who was abducted on her way to school. On Monday, officials from the Pennsylvania State Police Crime Lab told York City Police Detective Bob Pace they'd found a match to DNA submitted as part of a rape investigation kit gathered after the girl was attacked Dec. 14. The results matched Bereim Lawrence Dorm, 20, who works for a local company that cleans businesses and medical facilities, police said. Dorm was arrested Tuesday afternoon, said Lt. Ron Camacho, who heads the city's detective division. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref20.html Minnesota - A man in prison in South Dakota has been charged with murder in the death of a Blue Mounds State Park employee six years ago. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref21.html Pennsylvania - Jason Kern had nothing to say before being sentenced Tuesday for raping a teen in 2003 — a crime he was linked to three years later through a national DNA database. The 33-year-old stood in front of Judge Michael Barrasse in an orange state Department of Corrections uniform as the judge handed down a 7½-to-20-year sentence for rape by forcible compulsion. New York - A 38-year-old man, apprehended as a result of a DNA sample he had been required to provide in an unrelated drug case, has been convicted of the violent rape and armed robbery of a 30-year-old Richmond Hill beauty salon employee in 1996. Alex Jackson, 38, last month finished a 2½ to 5 year prison term at the Riverview Correctional Facility in Ogdensburg on drug sale charges. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested and arraigned on the Queens County grand jury indictment charging him with the rape and armed robbery of 10 years ago. “After nearly 10 years of avoiding arrest in the case, this recidivist was unwittingly snagged by his own genes when the DNA sample he had been required to provide when sentenced to prison on unrelated drug charges was positively matched to a DNA sample collected at the hospital from the rape victim”, district attorney Richard A. Brown said. “This case underscores yet again the crucial importance of DNA evidence which is irrefutable proof of guilt or innocence.” “The prosecution is the result of the City’s Backlog Project which is an initiative that reopens sexual assault cases in which perpetrators have been identified using DNA from rape kits that are matched with convicted felony offender DNA profiles on file with New York and national DNA databanks”, Brown said. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref23.html California - DNA evidence has connected a man to the 10-year-old stabbing murder of his ex-lover's new boyfriend in a San Jose home, according to Santa Clara Sheriff's Sgt. Ed Wise. Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref24.html Did You Know? Topic: The sound of DNA Cell receptors, flawed genes that cause cancer, hormones, proteins linked to generative disease, DNA sequences from wild plants — these are just some of the sources for one of the most unusual, if not the most natural, forms of music ever heard. The way it works is this: the code for a gene or a protein is fed into a computer programme, which transcribes it into a sequence of notes. What results is random and, everyone admits, hardly a threat to Bach or Beethoven. Protein music, in its present form, is repetitive and often banal, yet it can also be sometimes strange and haunting. Linda Long, a biochemist-cum-musician and research fellow at Britain's University of Exeter, has compiled two CDs of music generated by proteins in herbs and the body. Father of DNA music Paternity of DNA music can arguably be traced to Susumu Ohno, a leading American scientist of Japanese descent. In the 1980s, Ohno wrote an influential paper pointing out that repetition is the underlying structure in both musical composition and DNA. Could the genome, he wondered, also make music? Early explorers, though, found deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to be a pretty limiting musical molecule. Between its interesting bits — the nuggets of protein-coding genes — are long, dreary, horribly repetitive stretches, sometimes called "junk" DNA, where nothing at all seems to happen. Plus, DNA offers only four notes or combinations of them — cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine, the rungs of its double-helix ladder — which is also musically limiting. So researchers switched focus to a more flexible bio-music source: proteins, the myriad, complex molecules created by genes. By assigning specific notes to each amino acid, the building blocks of proteins, composers found a wider range. The problem: proteins have 20 amino acids, amounting to a two-and-a-half octave range that can make for jarring, unmelodic jumps. Bending the rules Writing in the latest issue of the journal Genome Biology, Rie Takahashi and Jeffrey Miller of the University of California, Los Angeles, believe they have found a way around the jumpiness. Instead of assigning a single note, they gave each amino acid a triad, a three-note chord. They also bent the rules slightly, by attributing to seven of the amino acids slight variations on chords used in the other 13. For rhythm, they used triplets of DNA bases, called codons, in the gene that made the protein. The "musicalised" proteins "sound mellow and jazzy," the British weekly New Scientist said appreciatively last week. Some of the claims made for protein music leave others cold, however. "To the casual listener, it doesn't matter very much whether the composer starts with random numbers, the Earth's magnetic field, DNA, or what have you," Dmitri Tymoczko, assistant professor of music at Princeton University, told AFP. "... Virtually any sequence of numbers, or quantitative data more generally, can be translated into musical form. There's a long history of this." Michael Beckerman, chair of the department of music at New York University, agrees. "I can make up [musical] pieces from my phone number and from any collection of patterns, no matter how random," he said in an email. As to the claim that a listener would feel an emotional link to DNA, he said, "it also seems fairly arbitrary. Who would judge whether the music coming out of this is any different from random pattern-derived music?" Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow at Harvard/MIT Divsion of Health Science and Technology, believes that protein music's great potential lies not in music, but in science education and health. Transcribing the complex 3D structure into a musical sequence could help children and the blind understand genomics, said Alterovitz. Melody reveals the malady More futuristic is the hope that protein music could be used as an audible diagnostic tool. A healthy individual's DNA or proteins would be harmonious; a flaw, suggesting a disease, would be instantly recognisable as disharmony. The melody would reveal the malady, so to speak. "While a person's gene sequence is generally static, gene expression and protein abundance can change over time — and across different tissues," Alterovitz said. "Being able to use this information and translate it into actionable sound/music to guide decision-making in real time — that would be the Holy Grail." Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_44_apr_07/vol44_ref03.html Events and conferences for 2007 that may of interest to you include: AFDAA (Association of DNA Analysts and Administrators) Conference – August 2-3, 2007 – Austin, TX. Contact Joseph Warren 817-735-5107 Web site: www.AFDAA.org 18th International Symposium on Human Identification - October 1-4, 2007 Renaissance Hollywood Hotel - Hollywood, California Web site: www.promega.com/geneticsymp18/ The DNA Informant is a free bi-weekly email newsletter, published by DNA Labs International. DNA Labs International is a private, ISO 17025 Accredited, Forensic Serology and DNA Identity Testing Laboratory, founded in 2004 by a Board Certified Fellow in Molecular Biology with over two decades of experience in Forensic Serology and DNA Analysis in United States Crime Labs. Our primary mission is to help our clients identify criminals within their jurisdiction by providing timely, accurate and cost effective DNA testing results. To do this we created an organization based on industry best practices from over 20 State Crime Labs around the United States. We are located in Deerfield Beach, Florida, just minutes from the Fort Lauderdale airport. DNA Labs International’s services are now available for individual cases and outsourcing contracts. Please keep us in mind as you start to consider your outsourcing needs, regular and rush cases and DNA case review. Editor: Karen Daurie Karen.Daurie@DNALabsInternational.com If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, please click on http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/remove_newsletter.html |
