|
Please see our “Did You Know?” section toward the end of this issue. In Michigan, starting in July of 2009, every suspect in a serious or violent crime will be required to undergo DNA testing. According to officials, this new law is “well-intended and designed to protect everyone in Michigan” but is coming at a bad time for the state. And in Alabama, under a proposed new law, DNA would be collected from anyone arrested for a felony. “The bill also would provide easier access to DNA testing for those convicted of capital crimes before this form of screening was available.” In addition to these stories you will find brief summaries of new and ongoing cases involving the use of DNA analysis. Every story is followed by a link to its original source, which you can follow for more details. In The News
Labs will struggle with backlogs, funding to get swabs of all violent crime suspects, officials say.A state law requiring DNA samples of every person arrested for a violent offense in Michigan will create physical and fiscal problems, according to an official charged with carrying out the mandate. Starting in July, every suspect in a serious or violent crime -- including assault, rape and armed robbery -- will be required to undergo DNA testing. Currently, only those convicted of violent crimes are routinely tested. The legislation, signed into law by Gov. Jennifer Granholm just before the end of 2008, will mean nearly 20,000 additional criminal suspects annually will also be sampled and the information entered into a state database. "The legislation is well-intended and designed to protect everyone in Michigan by helping to determine if persons arrested for violent crimes may be responsible for other offenses," said Capt. Michael Thomas, who heads the Michigan State Police forensic crime labs. "But the problem is this is unfunded legislation and coming at a time when everyone, especially in state government, is facing severe cutbacks." Source: www.detnews.com
Alabama lawmakers consider expanded DNA testing and access in criminal casesA proposed new law on DNA collection and testing in criminal cases ought to hold some appeal for everyone. The legislation broadens the pool of DNA samples to be collected by the state. If it passes, those who have been arrested on felony charges or any sexual offense - as opposed to just those who have been convicted - will have their DNA put into the state's database. The bill also provides a path for after-the-fact DNA testing for those convicted of capital crimes before current scientific methods were available.
Fifteen states already get DNA samples from defendants at the point of arrest, and so does the federal government. To help cover the cost of expanding Alabama's database, there'd be a $10 increase - from $2 to $12 - in court costs specifically assigned to support the state's DNA work. The bill also would provide easier access to DNA testing for those convicted of capital crimes before this form of screening was available. Alabama is one of only six states without a law for DNA tests in old cases. Source: www.al.com
New and Ongoing Stories Involving the Use of DNA Evidence Wisconsin - Authorities in Fond du Lac say a DNA match helped lead to an arrest in a 32-year-old homicide. Police arrested 53-year-old Thomas Niesen of Ashwaubenon on Wednesday. He is suspected of killing 19-year-old Kathleen Leichtman in July 1976 and leaving her body by the side of the road. He is expected to be formally charged Tuesday morning. Source: www.wqow.com
Texas - A Texas judge has tossed out rape charges against a Fort Worth, Texas, man who died in prison, proclaiming his innocence to the end.
Travis County State District Judge Charlie Baird ordered Friday that any mention of Timothy Cole's 1986 conviction in Lubbock County for aggravated sexual assault be expunged from any criminal record. According to the Innocence Project of Texas, Cole is the first person to be posthumously exonerated by DNA evidence. He died in prison in 1999, while serving a 25-year sentence. Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com
Louisiana - Calvin Catalon Jr., 29, who is wanted in connection with a 2005 kidnapping and aggravated burglary in the Cankton area and an attempted bank robbery in Carencro, has been captured after a three-year manhunt. Guidroz said the break in case came in December when his office was notified that a DNA match had linking evidence taken in the initial assault with Catalon, who has been living in the Lafayette area. Source: www.dailyworld.com
Virginia - An Arrington man was convicted in Nelson County Circuit Court last week of indecent liberties with a minor after a two-day jury trial.
A jury of eight women and four men deliberated for more than four hours before recommending that John Edward Johnson Jr., 48, spend five years in prison for the conviction, which is a felony and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Van Itallie said she found 23 separate seminal stains on five of the six items taken from the room and that Johnson’s DNA was present in 22. Source: www.nelsoncountytimes.com
Florida - A man in prison for battery now faces a first-degree murder charge after DNA linked him to an 8-year-old homicide during a Deerfield Beach home invasion robbery, the Broward Sheriff's Office said. On Oct. 27, Errol Benjamin Mott, 43, began serving an 18-month sentence for breaking into a Miramar home and hitting the homeowner with a piece of steel. Three months later, Mott's DNA matched samples collected from the sidewalk and blinds in the Deerfield Beach case, his arrest report said. Source: www.sun-sentinel.com
Washington DC - Through the advances of DNA testing, Montgomery County detectives say they’ve solved the quarter-century-old murder of a University of Maryland student. Police saved DNA evidence from the sexual assault, but the technology did not exist for the type of testing that can be conducted today. Last year, Montgomery County police determined the DNA evidence sample was suitable for testing, and the sample was entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System database. Recently the sample was matched to Gerald Anderson Abernathy, an escaped inmate who was at large at the time of Stark’s murder. Source: www.dcexaminer.com
Florida - A DNA match has led to charges in a 1992 17-year-old sexual battery case involving a pre-teen girl. Pinellas deputies have charged Louis Jerome Jones, 52, with one count of sexual battery on a child. The case was reopened in 2006, and last year, investigators discovered DNA linking Jones to the attack, deputies say. Source: www.msnbc.msn.com
Pennsylvania - A Norristown man who was arrested for burglary after a biological analysis of feces left at a crime scene matched his DNA was sentenced to prison and probation Friday. Source: www.timesherald.com
Wisconsin - A man sentenced to life in prison for killing a woman in 1984 had his conviction overturned and was released Friday on a personal recognizance bond after spending 23 years behind bars. Robert Lee Stinson, 44, of Milwaukee, walked out of the New Lisbon Correctional Institution in street clothes and hugged his sister and members of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. A judge vacated the sentence after the Project argued that bite-mark analysis and DNA evidence that didn't match evidence from the crime scene, defense attorney Byron Lichstein said. Source: www.google.com
Tennessee. - A jury unanimously found a man guilty of first-degree murder in the death of a Vanderbilt University student in 1975. Jerome Barrett was on trial in the death of Sarah Des Prez, 19, who was found suffocated in her Nashville apartment. The jury recommended a life sentence for Barrett. On Thursday morning, a DNA expert with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation testified that six items on Des Prez's bed matched Barrett's DNA. DNA on Des Prez's blouse also matched Barrett's, according to the expert. Source: www.msnbc.msn.com
Texas - Raul Cortez was found guilty Thursday of the 2004 shooting deaths of Rosa Barbosa, 46; her nephew, Matthew Barbosa, 25; and his friends Austin York, 18; and Matthew Self, 17. All four were shot inside Ms. Barbosa’s home. The key prosecution witness, co-defendant Eddie Ray Williams, had earlier testified that he and Cortez killed the victims during a botched robbery plot. A DNA expert also linked Cortez to latex gloves and duct tape found at the crime scene. Source: www.dallasnews.com
Utah - A DNA sample match has led police to arrest a registered sex offender for raping a woman near the mouth of Ogden Canyon in May.
The 45-year-old Ogden man, James F. Cox, was arraigned this week on felony rape charges, said Ogden Police Detective Tim Scott. The Ogden police sent a DNA sample to the state crime lab. The analysis was completed in November, and the sample matched one filed in a national database after a sexual assault in Nevada, Scott said. The match was then confirmed with a new sample, and the man was arrested on Jan. 23. Source: www.sltrib.com
New York- A dropped screwdriver and the DNA evidence left on it helped Port Dickinson Police to solve a burglary that took place last summer, police said. Police recently charged Perrin R. Smith, 26, with second-degree burglary, a felony, police said. Source: www.pressconnects.com
Virginia - A 1979 Fairfax County slaying has been solved after a hair follicle found at the Oakton home where a man was fatally stabbed turned out to match a convicted burglar's DNA stored in the state's data bank, police said yesterday. At the time he was killed, John B. Bell, 68, an auto mechanic, was staying with his 82-year-old sister, Mary Bell, because her home had been burglarized twice in recent months and she was frightened. Police believe that on Jan. 20, 1979, Douglas Lee Simmons, 18, decided to once again burglarize the house. Source: www.washingtonpost.com
InternationalMalaysia -An identical twin has escaped execution in Malaysia after a judge ruled it was impossible to determine which brother was the drug trafficker.According to the judge there was no doubt that either Sathis Raj or Sabarish Raj, both 27 years old, was guilty of trafficking 166 kilograms of cannabis and 1.7 kilograms of opium, but because they looked the same and had the same DNA it was impossible to determine which one. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk New Zealand - Police will be given controversial new powers to take DNA from suspected criminals under a raft of law and order changes before Parliament this week. Under the changes, police will no longer need approval from a High Court judge before someone is forced to provide DNA before they are convicted, with samples immediately matched against samples from unsolved crimes. The Criminal Investigation (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill will eventually extend police powers to collect DNA to everyone arrested of an imprisonable offence with samples taken at the point charges are about to be laid. Source: www.stuff.co.nz
Did you know?NIJ Funding Opportunity Forensic DNA Unit Efficiency Improvement Grant The due date for applying for funding under this announcement is March 23, 2009, 11:59 p.m. eastern time. The purpose of the FY 2009 Forensic DNA Unit Efficiency Improvement Program is to provide a unique opportunity for States and units of local government to develop and implement a program to improve the capacity and efficiency of applicants’ DNA units. Public crime laboratories that have mission-critical capacity needs that are not currently being met under Forensic DNA Backlog Reduction Program awards are encouraged to apply for assistance; however, priority consideration will be given to proposals that present novel or innovative approaches, with additional consideration given to projects that have the potential to affect the entire forensic DNA community. NIJ’s objective is to publish one or more successful, carefully evaluated, and novel efficiency improvement program awards as model programs. Such a publication would assist other State and local government forensic DNA laboratories to implement similar strategies and subsequently increase efficiency and capacity. Source: www.ncjrs.gov
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 |
