DNA

Hundreds of Broward Cases in Doubt Over DNA Testing Problems, Expert's Suspension for Sexism, Racism

May 31, 2017 in Criminal Justice, Forensics, Investigation, Justice

The shots rang out before either cop could reach for his holster. The only thing the two Broward Sheriff's deputies could do was call for help. "We're shot!" came a voice over police radio. Then it was quiet.

When the bullets stopped flying that November night, Dep. Corey Carbocci lay bleeding on the pavement. Dep. Brian Tephford hung halfway out of his patrol car. Their red, white, and blue police lights were still flashing across the sprawling condo complex where a routine traffic stop had suddenly turned violent.

A swarm of police and first responders sped to Versailles Gardens, a cluster of buildings off McNab Road in the suburb of Tamarac. Screams came from the crowd that had formed near the deputies. Carbocci, 37, clutched his chest and leg as paramedics assessed his wounds. But Tephford wasn't moving. The 34-year-old father of three was soon pronounced dead.

Three suspected gunmen — Eloyn Ingraham, Bernard Forbes, and Andre Delancy — were caught the day after the November 11, 2006 attack, holed up in a room at a Dania Beach inn with two Glocks in the toilet tank and a Springfield Arms pistol under a bed. Prosecutors said ballistics, cellphone data, eyewitness accounts, and DNA evidence all linked the men to the crime.

Can DNA Evidence Be Too Convincing? An Acquitted Man Thinks So

May 18, 2017 in Justice, Forensics, Criminal Justice

It has been about three months since Terrell Gills’s release from jail, and there are still sleepless nights and days spent in his room as he contemplates the year and a half he spent on Rikers Island for a crime of which he was acquitted.

He stays there for most of the day with the door locked, his jail life so ingrained that he still eats at times close to his old jail schedule: 4:30 a.m., noon and 5 p.m.

There is other baggage: antisocial feelings, and the questions that come during job interviews about the nearly two years left blank on his résumé.

The answers do not come easily.

Mr. Gills, now 36, was arrested in August 2015, accused of robbing a Dunkin’ Donuts about three months earlier in Jamaica, Queens. The arrest was made, in part, on the strength of forensic evidence that is typically persuasive: a DNA match.

Rapid DNA Legislation Passes Out of House Judiciary Committee

April 28, 2017 in Forensics, Criminal Justice, Investigation, Justice

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Rapid DNA Act, introduced by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) passed out of the House Judiciary Committee and is on its way to a full vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

If passed, the Rapid DNA Act would establish a system for the integration of Rapid DNA instruments for use by law enforcement to help reduce the DNA backlog. Unlike traditional DNA analysis, which can take weeks, Rapid DNA analysis permits processing of DNA samples in approximately 90 minutes or less.

This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way in which arrested individuals are enrolled in the criminal justice system, shorten the time required for their DNA to be linked to unsolved crimes, and expedite the exoneration of innocent suspects by giving law enforcement officials a new system that meets FBI quality assurance standards to compare DNA samples collected at the time of an arrest to profiles in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

Congressman Sensenbrenner: “Today’s passage of the Rapid DNA Act out of the House Judiciary Committee is a promising development that brings us one step closer to safer communities throughout the nation. Rapid DNA technology is an effective tool for law enforcement that will help quickly identify arrestees and offenders, as well as reduce the overwhelming backlog in forensic DNA analysis. It will also make crime fighting efforts more efficient and help prevent future crimes from occurring, which saves time and taxpayer dollars. I look forward to this smart legislation moving forward to a vote on the House floor.”

DA Fighting for Twin’s DNA Test to Be Accepted in Trial

February 14, 2017 in Criminal Justice, Forensics, Investigation, Justice

New twin-splitting technology is being put to the test for the first time ever in a Hub courtroom this week, and Suffolk prosecutors hope the new-age science can finally help solve a pair of rapes that occurred nearly 15 years ago.

An old DNA test couldn’t separate the chief suspect in the case, Dwayne McNair, from his identical twin brother, Dwight McNair. That issue put Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley in a tight spot, and in 2014 he temporarily dropped charges stemming from a pair of 2004 rapes so he could see if a new test developed in Germany would work.

Prosecutors say it did, and that it conclusively shows that Dwayne McNair’s DNA was in a condom he allegedly used during the crime. That potentially damning piece of evidence only exists because a quick-thinking woman McNair is accused of raping kept the condom and brought it to authorities.

DA to reopen 2000 closed cases in Broward County with DNA errors

September 30, 2016

Two years ago, Boynton Beach forensic expert Tiffany Roy was hired to double-check DNA evidence swabbed from a knife handle. What she found was troubling: The Broward Sheriff’s Office crime lab had mistakenly claimed it was conclusive.

It wasn’t.

As New Times previously reported, Roy complained to the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, which investigated and agreed with her findings.

Now, the crime lab faces revocation of its accreditation, and the Broward State Attorney’s Office will likely have to reopen thousands of closed cases.

PCAST Report Final Issued

September 20, 2016 in Forensics, Criminal Justice, Investigation, Justice

Report on Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods

On September 20, 2016, PCAST released a Report to the President on Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison

https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/pcast/docsreports

Alleged DNA miscalculations by Broward Crime Lab could reopen slew of cases.

July 08, 2016

I'm not saying that DNA is junk science, I'm saying that the way this lab was applying it in this case was junk.

— Monique Brochu, defense lawyer

Broward County Crime Lab DNA Mixture Problems

June 29, 2016

In March 2015, prosecutors temporarily stopped sending evidence to what was then a state-of-the-art city forensics lab in Washington, DC, over concerns technicians had bungled cases and misstated the likelihood DNA had been left at a crime scene. Earlier this month, the crime lab for the entire city of Austin, Texas, was shut down amid concern its technicians weren't following proper procedure. Both events amounted to earthquakes in the criminal-justice world: Crime labs are responsible for handling nearly every piece of physical evidence. They need to be accurate.

Now, according to an independent forensics analyst, the very same DNA issues have struck the scandal-plagued Broward Sheriff's Office Crime Lab. The place is just now recovering from allegations a former drug analyst potentially tainted thousands of separate cases.

DNA Evidence Is Not Infallible

June 01, 2016

Earlier this month, the Texas Forensic Science Commission raised concerns about the accuracy of the statistical interpretation of DNA evidence, and it is now checking whether convictions going back more than a decade are safe.

Despite how it is often portrayed, in the media and in courts, the forensic science of DNA is far from infallible. Particularly concerning is that police and prosecutors now frequently talk of 'touch DNA' — genetic profiles of suspects and offenders that have been generated in a laboratory from just a handful of skin cells left behind in a fingerprint.

Research done by me and others at the University of Indianapolis in Indiana has highlighted how unreliable this kind of evidence can be. We have found that it is relatively straightforward for an innocent person's DNA to be inadvertently transferred to surfaces that he or she has never come into contact with. This could place people at crime scenes that they had never visited or link them to weapons they had never handled.

Such transfer could also dilute the statistics generated from DNA evidence, and thereby render strong genetic evidence almost insignificant. (The statistics issue is reportedly the focus of the Texas investigation.)

DNA Mixture Interpretation and the Law

March 03, 2016

DNA mixtures

Recent developments in the Texas criminal justice system may point towards the necessity of, once again, looking back at convictions because of DNA. This time however, the issue is not the certainty which DNA can provide a jury that other evidence cannot. Rather, the issue centers around the recent changes in interpretation guidelines for mixtures, and the extent to which convictions based on the previous methods of calculating results were misleading to juries. This issue may be much more problematic for criminal justice systems to deal with then the first time DNA gave us reason to look backwards. But deal with it they must.

LED lights reduce the PCR cycle time

September 09, 2015

New technology developed by UC Berkeley bioengineers promises to make a workhorse lab tool cheaper, more portable and many times faster by accelerating the heating and cooling of genetic samples with the switch of a light.

This turbocharged thermal cycling, described in a paper published in the journal Light: Science & Application, greatly expands the clinical and research applications of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, with results ready in minutes instead of an hour or more.

Northeastern Association of Forensic Scientists WANTS YOU to present in their DNA SESSION

August 11, 2015

http://www.neafs.org/index.php/annual-meeting

DNA on Pizza Crust led police to Suspect

May 21, 2015

Authorities searched a Maryland home overnight in the investigation of a deadly mansion murder, going through the trash and removing bags of evidence -- but in the end it was a piece of pizza crust that could lead to the suspect's arrest.

Daron Dylon Wint, 34, was identified on Wednesday as the key suspect in the quadruple slaying and arson attack in Northwest, a section of Washington, D.C. A court issued an arrest warrant for Wint with “murder one while armed,” authorities said.

Two sources familiar with the case told ABC News that DNA found on the crust of a Domino's pizza that had been delivered to the house led authorities to identify Wint as the suspect.

SelectaDNA makes debut at TN Subway Sub Location

May 11, 2015 in Investigation, Justice, Forensics, Criminal Justice

A Subway franchise in Knoxville, Tenn. is the first US business to arm itself with “intruder spray,” which tags would-be robbers with a product called SelectaDNA. According to the manufacturer, the solution contains “a unique DNA code which can be used to uniquely mark and trace both items of property and criminals.”

SelectaDNA’s US distributor, Johan Larsen, told the Knoxville News-Sentinel that the system is already being used in Australia and Europe. Successfully, at least according to company claims.

Anyone bold enough to ignore warning signs and break into (or bust out of) the sandwich shop will be coated in a fine mist of synthetic DNA. The spray is “traceable for weeks” and is “only visible with a glow under ultraviolet light,”

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