Please see our “Did You Know?” section at the end of this issue.

Topic: State-by-State Breakdown of DNA Laws.  

We are continuously reading new or ongoing stories about who should be required to submit DNA samples – convicted felons vs. arrestees, the inclusion of juveniles, types of felonies – and what the pros and cons are of every situation. Many considerations are taken when voting on and passing new legislations, and with the efforts being put forth by all interested parties to continue to improve the criminal justice system, I thought it would be interesting to see where we stand at this point. In the “Did You Know?” section at the end of the newsletter, you will find a state-by-state breakdown of DNA laws, which serves as a quick and easy overview.  

As for the news stories included in this issue, developments continue on legislations supporting the use of DNA in criminal cases, including arrests and the rights of prisoners. In Massachusetts, one man, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned received the highest compensation settlement to date. And again, there are a great number of cases involving DNA evidence.  

In Washington, D.C. the House of Representatives passed provisions championed by Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties) that would provide federal grants to local prosecutors to help them prosecute cases stemming from "cold hit" DNA cases - cases where DNA on file matches evidence in a previously unsolved crime.

Gallegly's provisions were included in "The Children's Safety Act of 2005," which unanimously passed the House today. A previous version of the bill passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate. The Senate is expected to pass the current version and send it to the President this month.

"Once a crime has been solved, society owes it to the victim to prosecute the perpetrator," Gallegly said. "Equally, society needs to be assured that known criminals are not out on the streets committing more crimes and victimizing more people.

"Children are society's most vulnerable citizens. While all criminals belong behind bars, crimes against children are particularly heinous. It's crucial that we identify and prosecute those who prey on the innocent."

The DNA provisions come from Gallegly's bill, "The Grants for DNA Backlog Prosecutions Act," which he introduced last year. It creates a five-year grant program to help prosecutors bring cold hit cases to court.

DNA cold hit cases tend to be complex murder and sexual assault crimes. In Ventura County alone, District Attorney Greg Totten estimated DNA cold hits could identify a perpetrator in more than 300 unsolved homicide cases.

"The number of rape and homicide cases solved through DNA technology is increasing at an astonishing rate every year and is quickly outpacing the ability of prosecutors to keep up," Totten said last year. "In recognizing and attacking this national problem, Congressman Gallegly's bill is a direct aid to victims in Ventura County and elsewhere who have longed to finally see justice done for their loved ones. Once again, Congressman Gallegly has demonstrated an unyielding commitment to law enforcement and crime victims."

According to the California District Attorneys Association, the database averages three cold hit cases a day. As of late 2005, 1,200 cold hits had been made in California, with forecasts that it will lead to 4,000 new cases a year.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref01.html

New Mexico - New Mexico will begin collecting DNA samples next year from adults arrested for some felonies under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Bill Richardson. 
 
The new DNA law expands the previous law, which required adult offenders to provide DNA samples when they're convicted. 
 
The measure was dubbed "Katie's Law" in memory of Kathryn "Katie" Sepich, a New Mexico State University student who was raped and slain in 2003. Her killer has not been found. 
 
Under the new law, suspects 18 and over will have to provide DNA samples _ from a cheek swab, for example _ when they're booked at jails or detention centers for any of a range of felonies, including murder, kidnapping, burglary and sex offenses. 
 
If they're ultimately acquitted or not prosecuted or convicted of a misdemeanor, they can request that the sample be expunged. 
 
The new law also requires that DNA samples collected from sexual assault victims be put in the state DNA database. 
 
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref02.html

Ohio inmates may continue to seek state-paid DNA tests in search of evidence that could free them under a bill the Ohio Senate passed unanimously on Tuesday.

The bill heads to the House, where the sponsor, Sen. David Goodman, has said he would seek changes making more inmates eligible for the tests.

A law the Columbus-area Republican got passed two years ago allows the tests only if inmates can show any reasonable jury would acquit them if the DNA result comes back favorable to them. Other requirements include having biological evidence to test and at least a year remaining on a prison sentence.

Mostly because of that jury standard, 220 inmates who sought the tests were turned away in two years of the program. Another 72 requests are pending. DNA tests were done on 14 convicts, and one was cleared.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref03.html

Again, over the past two weeks there were a few stories of involving men who were wrongfully convicted.

Massachusetts - The city of Boston has reached a record settlement with a man wrongly imprisoned for more than a decade.

Neil Miller was freed in 2000 after D-N-A evidence showed he couldn't have been the man who raped and robbed an Emerson College student in 1989.  

Miller sued prosecutors and Boston police in 2003, claiming they pushed the victim to identify Miller as her attacker and ignored evidence that could have cleared him.

The three-point-two (m) million dollar settlement is the largest for a civil rights conviction in state history.  

Miller says the deal solves his financial woes but he has no idea what to do with the money. He said it has been hard to find a job despite being exonerated.

Last year, a Boston man, Larry Taylor, pleaded guilty to three rapes, including the one for which Miller was wrongly convicted.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref04.html

Massachusetts - A man who was cleared by DNA evidence after serving 10 years in prison for a rape he did not commit has settled his lawsuit against the city for $2 million.

Eric Sarsfield, 42, of Clinton, sought at least $10 million in damages in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the city and several police officers.

"It has been 20 years of my life," Sarsfield said. "At least I don't have to worry about it anymore, and I can put it behind me now."

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref05.html

Texas - Governor Rick Perry has granted a pardon to a Montgomery County man imprisoned for 18 years for a sexual assault that new D-N-A tests show he didn't commit.

Perry granted the pardon to 42-year-old Arthur Mumphrey, based on his innocence in the 1986 knifepoint assault on a 12-year-old girl. The state pardon and paroles board had recommended the pardon unanimously.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref06.html

Missouri - A Jackson man was released Monday after serving 12 years behind bars for murder and armed robbery.  

29 year old Cedric Willis had been charged in 1994 with the murder of Carl White Junior and the robbing of White's wife Gloria.  He was convicted on eye witness testimony in 1997.

He told his mother he would be right back when they arrested him.  He said he told her that because, "The things they were saying, I did, I knew I didn't do none of that, so I told my mama I'll be right back and I never saw her again until 12 years later." 

Willis is one of 175 people who have been freed by DNA evidence since 1988. He was ordered released by Circuit Judge Tomie Green.  A lawyer for the Innocence Project in New Orleans, Emily Maw was instrumental in getting Willis released, with the DNA evidence.  She said the lesson of this case is that you should never rely on "eyewitness testimony", because as compelling as it is, it has been wrong in 77 per cent of the cases where DNA produced a release.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref07.html

New and ongoing cases involving DNA evidence include:

Wisconsin - A 16-year-old Wisconsin boy confesses that he and his uncle raped and killed a photographer last Halloween.

The Associated Press reports Brendan Dassey is charged with being party to homicide, mutilation of a corpse and sexual assault.

According to a criminal complaint, Dassey says Teresa Halbach, 25, was shackled naked to a bed, stabbed and slit in her throat.

Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery, 43, then dragged her body to a garage, shot her and burned her corpse in a pit.

If convicted of the charge, Dassey faces a mandatory term of life in prison. Prosecutors plan to seek additional charges against Avery, who was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and possession of firearms by a felon in November.

Avery had already served 18 years in prison for rape before being exonerated by DNA evidence in 2003. Prosecutor Ken Kratz says at a news conference, "I intend to hold each of these defendants accountable for the rape, torture and murder of Teresa Halbach...

There is a substantial amount of physical evidence that now makes sense, fits a lot of pieces together." 

Kratz says Avery lured Halbach to a salvage lot by calling Auto Trader Magazine and asking for one of its freelancers to photograph a minivan for sale.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref09.html

For more on the Steven Avery case and his release from prison, based on DNA evidence, in 2003: 

Wisconsin - Steven Avery haunts the offices of the UW-Madison Law School's Innocence Project.

The school removed Avery's photo and story from its Web site Friday morning in deference to the family of Teresa Halbach.

But the walls still hold photos of the brushy-bearded Avery posing in his plaid shirt with UW students after their legal work released him from prison in 2003.

As details of Halbach's apparent rape and murder became public last week, the mood at the project offices was somber.

Avery is charged with raping and killing the 25-year-old Halbach at his family's Manitowoc County junkyard in October 2005. His 16-year-old nephew was charged Thursday with participating and told police details about Halbach's death that were so shocking that I, like a lot of people, wish I hadn't read them.

John Pray, a professor who directs the Innocence Project, felt much the same way.

"The details were horrifying, and we feel awful for her family," he said. "It's shocking what happened to Teresa Halbach, and shocking that he (Avery) has been implicated in it.

"Everyone is depressed about it."

The project, which helped free Avery from prison for a 1985 rape he didn't commit, has received a slew of nasty phone calls and e-mails from people upset by the Avery case. By Friday afternoon, the staff had mostly stopped returning phone calls.

Pray looked tired as he showed his response to e-mailers who blamed the Innocence Project for Halbach's murder.

His response points out that because Avery was wrongly imprisoned for the 1985 rape, Gregory Allen, the real rapist in that case, was free to commit more crimes until he was eventually arrested for kidnapping and raping a Brown County woman in 1995.

"Not everyone understands that Avery wasn't released from prison on a legal technicality," Pray said.

Avery was released because a male pubic hair found in the pubic hair of the victim after the attack matched Allen's DNA when a test was finally done in 2003. It was a "cold hit," meaning the scientists weren't looking for Allen, who was by then in prison on the 1995 rape.

It later turned out that Allen was a known sex offender, that he was convicted of a similar attack near the spot of the rape in the Avery case, and that some Manitowoc law enforcement people suspected him at that time.

"We have to remind ourselves of the mission of the program," Pray said. "It's not only to make sure that innocent people aren't in prison, it's also to make sure that guilty people are convicted."

In our anger at Avery that's a fact that we can't overlook.

It's easy to say that Avery should never have been released.

Easy, until you consider that another woman was brutally raped by Allen in 1995, because the police went after Avery, and Allen went free. That second woman told Green Bay television station WBAY in 2003 that Avery wasn't the only victim of the false conviction. Her life, too, was ruined by Allen being on the loose between 1985 and 1995.

"He had 10 years of terror," she said. "Had they caught him back then, a lot of things would be different."

Obviously, if Avery had never been released, things might be different in the Halbach case, too. But if you go down that line of thinking, then you have to wonder what 18 years in prison did to Avery, and if life would have turned out differently for him, too.

The law students involved in freeing Avery have learned a hard and awful lesson about real life law. While there are DNA tests and all kinds of forensic science available today, there's no test that allows you to look into a man's heart and see what's there.

But while they've lost their innocence, I hope Avery doesn't cause the Innocence Project law students to lose their passion for justice.

If they do, all of us become his victims.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref08.html 

Raleigh, NC -- Long-awaited results of DNA testing in the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case finds the former Army doctor's hair was found clutched in his dead wife's hand. 
 
MacDonald was a Green Beret physician who was convicted of killing his wife and two daughters in 1970. 
 
MacDonald asked for the DNA testing in 1997, expecting it to support his argument that a band of crazed hippies broke into his home on Fort Bragg and killed his family.  
 
Federal prosecutors said today the testing didn't find any DNA from either the man or the woman named by MacDonald as suspects.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref10.html

New York - Two men on trial in a series of home invasion robberies were linked to some of the crime scenes by DNA recovered from items left behind, a forensic scientist testified as prosecutors wrapped up their case.

The DNA was found on a water bottle in a refrigerator, and on a cloth hat in a stolen Jaguar.

The testimony yesterday in Westchester County Court suggested that Ened Gjelaj was at the Harrison home of a couple who were tied up and robbed Sept. 28, 2004, and that his co-defendant Edmir Gega left the hat in the Jaguar after robbers fled a New City home Dec. 12, 2004.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref11.html

New York - A man linked by DNA evidence to two attacks on teenage girls pleaded guilty to rape on Tuesday, prosecutors said.  
 
Each girl had been walking home in Queens when Jofre Bautista dragged her into a vehicle to beat and rape her, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a news release.

Bautista, 34, of Brooklyn, faces two concurrent terms of 20 years in prison and will be required to register as a sexual offender when he is sentenced on March 27.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref12.html

Ohio -A break in a 2003 rape case has authorities in Summit County looking for a suspect.  

Police said DNA has linked 26-year-old Deancy Campbell to the crime. Police said that on Dec. 23, 2003, Campbell punched a woman several times in the face and raped her.

Police were able to collect enough evidence at the scene of the crime, and Campbell's DNA and name popped up with the state crime lab.

The Summit County Violent Crime Task Force has an award available for information leading to Campbell's whereabouts.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref13.html

New York - It's been more than five years since Jason Jones broke into a woman's apartment on Evergreen Drive, but DNA tests led to justice.

Jones, 38, of Monticello, pleaded guilty Monday in Sullivan County Court to first-degree rape, a felony.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref14.html

Connecticut - A convicted Connecticut sexual offender is being arraigned this morning on a fugitive from justice charge in connection with the murder and sexual assault 10 years ago of an 11-year-old girl in Florida, Connecticut authorities said. 
 
Robert S. Mitchell, 43, was arrested Wednesday afternoon on the fugitive charge in connection with the death of Cherie Morrisette, whose body was found in the St. Johns River on Dec. 8, 1996.

The case would have gone unsolved if it weren't for a routine DNA sample taken from Mitchell after he was convicted of assaulting a child in Windsor Locks in 2002. He served a year and a half in prison in the case and was released.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref15.html

California – Santa Barbara police used D-N-A evidence to solve a 1992 murder _ and arrested a man already in custody.

Forty-three-year-old Gregory Egan Edwards was arrested at San Quentin State Prison, where he was being held on a theft-related offense.

The Santa Cruz man is now a suspect in the murder of 27-year-old Korrina Dee Nicholas, a mother of five.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref16.html

Louisiana - Detectives booked a Lafayette man on murder charges Thursday after he was linked to a 17-year-old homicide by DNA evidence, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman said. 
 
Daniel Harman, 37, of Lafayette was booked Thursday on charges of first-degree murder and failure to register as a sex offender.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref17.html

Pennsylvania - DNA evidence places Jacuqin Byrd at the scene where Main Line catering worker Sarah Boone was killed in January, Montgomery County prosecutors said yesterday. 

During a preliminary hearing in Ardmore, county Detective Richard Nilsen said that a State Police lab analysis showed a "DNA mixture" was found on a hammer and a pair of bloody scissors. 

The DNA profiles matched those of Byrd and Boone. 

Byrd, 27, of Philadelphia, is a former Cricket Catering employee. He was arrested Feb. 16 and accused of killing Boone, 24, of King of Prussia.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref18.html

California - DNA evidence helped Fresno police make an arrest in a five year old rape case.

32-year-old Martin Morales was arrested after police say DNA linked him to a July 2001 sexual assault.

He now faces one count of felony forcible rape.

Morales is one of the first suspects in Fresno arrested with the help of a cold case DNA grant. 

The $1.2 million grant helps the Fresno Police Department review 300 "cold" sexual assault and 250 "cold" homicide cases.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref19.html

Missouri - Dorothy Fisher died horribly 26 years ago — bound, sexually assaulted, tortured and strangled. It was years before DNA testing was discovered, but police saved the evidence.

Her hard fight for her life finally told who killed her. Two years ago DNA from skin under a fingernail matched that of paroled rapist Dawud Abdelmalik.

On Thursday, a Jackson County jury convicted the Kansas City man of capital murder.

The only possible sentence is life without parole. Abdelmalik, 45, killed Fisher sometime between Aug. 9 and Aug. 12, 1980.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref20.html

Kentucky - A Burlington man has been charged by a federal grand jury with robbing three stores. The plea yesterday came just hours after he pleaded not guilty in state court to raping a store clerk during a robbery.

Forty-two-year-old David Hopper has been charged in five attacks over the last 14 years. Prosecutors say ten of them were committed by a blue-eyed rapist. D-N-A allegedly links Hopper to six of the attacks.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref21.html

California - A traveling magazine salesman from Missouri pleaded not guilty this morning to charges that he raped and killed a 90-year-old Lafayette woman in her home in December.

Richard Craig McNew, 32, a convicted felon from St. Louis, entered his plea in Contra Costa Superior Court in Walnut Creek in the slaying of Anna Elizabeth Vuori.

He faces special circumstances of murder committed during the commission of rape, robbery and burglary, making him eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty, Deputy District Attorney Paul Graves said today.

Investigators said DNA at the crime scene matched a sample of McNew's DNA included in a national database. McNew has a criminal record in Missouri that dates to 1993 and includes convictions for assault, robbery and drug and weapons possession, court records show.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref22.html

Florida - A drop of blood from a murder scene and a sex offender registration helped investigators crack a cold case in Marion County.

Debra Rawls was stabbed to death in June 2004.  

Detectives have had DNA evidence since the murder, but until now, they could never connect it to a suspect.  

Frederick Harris, 39, walked out of the Marion County Sheriff's Office on Thursday saying that the police got the wrong man.

"Right now I feel like I'm being kidnapped and taken away from my family. I'll have my day in court," he said.  

The murder scene was very bloody, and from it, police said they got a sample of the killer's blood and sent it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab in 2004.

That lab returned a match on Harris on Wednesday because he had just registered as a sex offender for conviction on another crime and had to give a blood sample.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref23.html

New York - Until this week, 41-year-old Darryl Littlejohn was a faceless ex-con getting by as a bouncer. That changed when authorities targeted the parolee in the brutal slaying of a graduate student who disappeared after last call at the bar where he worked.  
 
Now, some evidence is beginning to close in around Littlejohn, while other forensic evidence is creating a roadblock for investigators.  
 
Carpet fibers on the tape covering 24-year-old Imette St. Guillen's brutalized face have been linked to Littlejohn. The fibers on the tan tape match those from his Queens apartment and are the strongest evidence yet linking him to the crime.  
 
But police held off on charging the ex-con in that case because semen stains on a floral blanket wrapped around St. Guillen's body apparently do not trace back to him, sources told the New York Daily News. The semen results were among the "inconclusive" findings from several DNA and forensic tests, many of which must now be repeated, the sources said.  
 
In another setback to investigators, DNA recovered from underneath St. Guillen's fingernails did not match Littlejohn's, sources told the New York Post. Police spokesman Paul Browne said that the department was continuing to examine evidence.  
 
"This investigation, to a large extent, hinges on DNA evidence," New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday. "There's a lot of material being processed now. Some of it takes longer than others. So we'll just have to wait and see what develops from the lab," Kelly said.  
 
Littlejohn maintains his innocence, and has not been charged in the death of St. Guillen who was raped, strangled and suffocated with packaging tape. Her body was found on the side of a service road in Brooklyn. Police told the Daily News that he is the "only suspect."  
 
Meanwhile, police have also widened their investigation into Littlejohn as detectives searched for links to at least three unsolved rape and kidnapping cases in Queens and on Long Island, officials in both jurisdictions told the New York Times.  
 
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref24.html 

Later in the week, the following news was released: 

New York - There is breaking news in the investigation into the murder of Imette Saint Guillen. For the first time, police are officially calling bar bouncer Darryl Littlejohn the prime suspect in her brutal killing. 

Police are saying they've matched blood from the scene to Littlejohn.

Clearly this is a major break in the case. Police say this new DNA match along with circumstantial and forensic evidence they've gathered both at the scene and at the suspect's house in South Jamaica, Queens should be enough for a murder indictment.

Raymond Kelly, NYC Police Commissioner: "Darryl Littlejohn's blood was found on plastic ties that were used to bind Imette's hands behind her back and a DNA match to Littlejohn was made."

Police got the test results Saturday, after analyzing blood from the scene. It is the first piece of hard evidence that links bar bouncer Darryl Littlejohn to the crime, the murder of grad student Imette Saint Guillen.

Authorities say phone records place Littlejohn near the spot where her body was dumped. Sources tell ABC News that investigators have linked hair on the blanket that was used to wrap her body to Littlejohn's cat.

Two witnesses claim they saw Littlejohn and the victim leave "The Falls" bar together. But the DNA evidence is seen as a slam dunk.

Kelly: "When you talk about DNA, we're talking about the certainty of one in a trillion. So it is a ... very important piece of evidence for us."

But even with the new evidence, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would not call Littlejohn the killer, only confirming what Eyewitness News has been reporting for days: That Littlejohn is the prime suspect.

As of 6:00 p.m. Sunday he still had not been arrested or charged in the murder. Instead, he is in custody on a parole violation.

Police have elected to wait for a grand jury indictment to charge him, mainly sources say to keep Darryl Littlejohn's attorney in the dark as long as possible.

Kelly: "This investigation is going forward and there are a lot of different aspects to the investigation that as of yet certainly have not reached finality. There's a lot more work to be done.

In fact, the NYPD confirmed today that they will also present evidence to the grand jury that connects Littlejohn to other crimes in the area. Sources tell Eyewitness News that includes at least one prior sex assault.

And suddenly, in a murder that has gripped the city for more than two weeks, a bombshell break in the investigation: The DNA match police had hoped for.

As for Littlejohn's neighbors in South Jamaica, Queens some are expressing shock tonight but most don't want to talk about it.

At 121st Avenue in front of Littlejohn's home, it was almost eerily quiet Sunday night. Police were there standing guard, keeping the public and the media away from the home. They were not, however, going in and out of the home as they had for several days over the past week.

Man: "I don't know what to say, because I'd see him on the block. He lived over here. He'd say "bye" and that's it."

For days, police have been searching Littlejohn's home and a minivan in search of evidence. As police began building a case against the 41-year-old bar bouncer, residents witnessed firsthand how it all began to developed.

One woman we talked with is taking a wait and see attitude.

Woman: "It's sad, for someone's life to be cut short like that. But I don't want to comment until I'm sure. I don't judge anyone."

Darryl Littlejohn is a person many have seen around the neighborhood here. Some in the past several days have characterized him despite an extensive rap sheet as someone who is nice, quiet and helpful. Some here believe he is not responsible for the death of Imette Saint Guillen.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref25.html

Wisconsin - Testimony in the case against Jie Chen ended Wednesday without the murder suspect taking the stand in his own defense.

Prosecutors wrapped up their presentation with detailed scientific evidence using DNA analysis to connect Chen to Yuechan "Susan" Gong, who was bludgeoned to death on Oct. 22, 2004, inside her De Pere home.

Melissa Schwandt, a DNA analyst with the state Crime Lab, testified Wednesday that she found Chen's DNA on a meat cleaver used to beat Gong and on a shirt spattered with Gong's blood.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref26.html 

Florida - The man charged with killing a nanny west of Boca Raton was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Coral Springs girl. 
 
Jerry Wiggins, 30, declined to speak before Broward Circuit Judge Charles Greene gave him the maximum possible sentence for lewd and lascivious battery on the teenager. 

Wiggins now will be heading to Palm Beach County to face first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery charges in nanny Monica Rivera-Valdizan's slaying.  
 
Rivera-Valdizan's killing stumped authorities for more than a year with detectives describing where her body was dumped as "a clean crime scene."  
 
They suspected that whoever kidnapped the Peruvian woman held her captive before killing her. 
 
Palm Beach County sheriff's officials said the investigation broke open in January 2005 when DNA evidence in a Charlotte, N.C., sexual assault linked to Wiggins was entered into a national database. It matched DNA evidence recovered in Rivera-Valdizan's case, authorities said. 
 
Wiggins was extradited to Florida in March 2005 to first face trial for the November 2003 sexual assault of a teenage girl in his mother's Coral Springs apartment. 

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref27.html 

Missouri - A cold DNA hit prompted Jackson County prosecutors to charge a man Friday with raping a 7-year-old girl in her home in 1994.

Prosecutors charged Allen G. Hale, 42, with one count of forcible rape and one count of statutory rape. He was in jail Friday night. Bond was set at $250,000.

Police said Hale surrendered to police Friday on a probation violation stemming from a previous conviction for distributing a controlled substance.

It was the drug conviction from 2003 that helped police link Hale to the rape. While in prison, Hale had to submit a DNA sample, which was placed into a national database. In February, the database matched him to DNA recovered from the unsolved rape.

Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_14_mar_06/vol14_ref28.html 
 

Did You Know?

Topic: State-by-State Breakdown of DNA Laws

All 50 states require that convicted sex offenders provide a DNA sample, and states are increasingly expanding these policies to include offenders who have committed other serious crimes.  To date, 39 states require that all convicted felons provide a DNA sample to the state’s database.

Louisiana and Virginia have laws authorizing arrestee sampling; and Texas law allows post-indictment samples of certain sex offenders.  California’s Proposition 69, approved by voters on November 2, 2004, requires DNA samples of adults arrested for or charged with a felony sex offense, murder or voluntary manslaughter, or attempt of these crimes.  Starting in 2009, the measure requires arrestee sampling be expanded to arrests for any felony offense.  (This same measure requires collection from all convicted felons.) 

DNA data bases in all states today are connected to the National DNA Index System, which is run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for federal and state information sharing.

Source: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/genetics/DNAoffenses2004.htm

Editor: Karen Daurie

Karen.Daurie@DNALabsInternational.com  

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