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Please see our “Did You Know?” section toward the end of this issue. In The News In Colorado members of a governor’s task force are working on a set of recommendations to create uniform standards in preserving physical and biological evidence in criminal cases. In Texas “the Dallas County district attorney’s office has agreed to DNA testing for seven convicted inmates out of 57 cases that were previously denied testing”. Approximately 350 additional requests that were denied by the previous District Attorney will still be reviewed. And in California, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirms a law that that all federal felons provide DNA for U.S. database. Following these stories you will find new and ongoing cases involving the use of DNA evidence. Keeping DNA evidence critical, task force says Colorado - Members of a governor's task force said DNA evidence that could free people wrongfully convicted of murder or sexual assault should be preserved by law enforcement for as long as the defendant is behind bars. The task force settled on a set of tentative recommendations that, in part, call for storing and preserving DNA evidence in sexual assault and first- and second-degree murder cases while the defendant is incarcerated or on parole. But some district attorneys and police departments say their biggest challenge will be finding the space and resources to house physical evidence for long periods of time. For more on this story, please go to: Rocky Mountain News Innocence Project wants more DNA tests for Dallas convicts The Dallas County district attorney’s office has agreed to DNA testing for seven convicted inmates out of 57 cases that were previously denied testing, the district attorney and the Innocence Project of Texas said Monday. Attorneys from the Dallas County district attorney and the public defender’s offices must still review about 350 more requests that were denied by the previous district attorney. Dallas County has more exonerations than any other county in the United States. DNA tests have cleared 14 men since 2001 although one man has yet to be officially exonerated by the courts. Unlike many other counties, Dallas County preserved its evidence following convictions. For more on this story, please go to: The Dallas Morning News Court affirms law that all federal felons provide DNA for U.S. database A divided federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a law requiring all convicted federal felons to provide DNA samples for a database available to any police agency in the nation. The law, passed by Congress in 2004, expanded a previous statute in 2000 that covered only prisoners and parolees who had been convicted of violent crimes in federal court. In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said requiring DNA from all felons would aid law enforcement agencies without intruding seriously into the privacy of drug offenders and other nonviolent criminals. For more on this story, please go to: The San Francisco Chronicle New and Ongoing Stories Involving the Use of DNA Evidence Frederick W. Johnson, 47, is currently serving a life sentence in an unrelated case for sexual assault of a child. He now faces capital murder charges in the Feb. 7, 1984, death of Sharon Darnell, whose body was found in a deserted apartment complex. Source: Houston Chronicle Texas - Thirteen years after raping a woman in a Missouri City veterinary clinic and then cutting her throat, a man identified through DNA profiling as her attacker has pleaded guilty to the crime. Louis Charles Harper, now in his early 40s, reached a plea agreement with members of the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office, entered a guilty plea Thursday before Associate Judge Pedro Ruiz and was sentenced to 47 years in prison. Source: Fort Bend Now New York - DNA evidence helped arrest a 41-year-old Mount Vernon man in the burglary of a woman's apartment in 2003. Curtis Palmer of Mount Vernon was accused in the burglary after he was convicted of an unrelated felony charge. The conviction required Palmer to give a DNA sample to the National Combined DNA Index System. When Palmer's DNA was put through the system, it matched blood smears from the 2003 burglary. Source: The Journal News New York - Blood found on a pair of work pants belonging to accused murderer Mark Serrano contained DNA from murder victim Antonio Morey, 13, a state police DNA analyst testified. Source: Poughkeepsie Journal New York - In 1994, Lynn DeJac was found guilty of strangling her 13-year-old daughter during a night of drinking and bar hopping. On Wednesday, Ms. DeJac walked out of the Erie County courthouse free, and the first woman in the United States to have her conviction for killing someone overturned based on DNA evidence. Source: New York Times Oklahoma - An Oklahoma City man has been charged in a 1998 killing after investigators say the man was linked to the crime through DNA found on a sweat shirt. Leonardo Lenny Cosme, 27, was charged with first-degree murder for the March 29, 1998, shotgun slaying of 22-year-old Charles E. Pope. Source: Tulsa World California - Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims says new DNA technology allowed authorities to arrest a registered sex offender they suspect killed a Fresno High School student in 1974. Authorities arrested 51-year-old James Blaylock on suspicion of murdering Debra Lee Curb. Curb was just 17 when her parents found her dead at their Fresno home on January 1st, 1974. Source: San Jose Mercury News Pennsylvania - After a burglar smashed a window to enter Mueller's Flower Shop in Elizabethtown last Dec. 27, police suggested that the owner replace the broken window with wired security glass. The next night the burglar again returned to the flower shop. He managed to break the new glass, but he cut himself doing so, and left blood at "multiple locations" at the crime scene. Emrick eventually received reports from the Pennsylvania State Police laboratory that the blood DNA was consistent with the DNA profile of Matthew Kennedy, 24. Source: Lancaster New Era New York - A career criminal who was just a year away from freedom on his robbery sentence took a plea deal in Queens Supreme Court for a rape he committed in September 1995. He would have gotten away with it if not for a cold-case hit of his DNA that connected him to the crime. Darren Casher, 37, was indicted just a week before the statute of limitations would have blocked prosecution in the brutal, knife-point attack on a 25-year-old airport worker. Source: New York Post California -When David Pearman gave investigators a sample of his DNA, he knew it might help them link his older brother to the brutal 1983 rape and murder of a Campbell teenager. But last week, detectives came knocking at Pearman's door again. This time, they said, his DNA had connected Pearman to a separate horrendous crime - the rape of an 81-year-old San Jose woman. Now both brothers are facing charges that could send them to prison for life. They are being housed - in separate cells - in the Santa Clara County men's jail without bail. Source: San Jose Mercury News Did you know? One profiling method popular with forensic experts uses short tandem repeats (STRs are short identical sequences of DNA found in specific regions of a chromosome) to compare samples of DNA from a crime scene to DNA from a suspect or victim. Commercial PCR systems that amplify STRs work best if the amount of DNA-measured in nanograms per microliter of solution-fed into the system is within a narrow range. Too concentrated a solution overwhelms the detection apparatus; too diluted yields poor results or none at all. DNA quantitation-assessing the amount of DNA present in a crime scene sample-is the necessary precursor to making a suitable solution for profiling. A widely used method to achieve this is quantitative PCR (qPCR); however, current commercial qPCR kits may produce varying values for the DNA concentrations in the kit's reference samples, rendering these standards less reliable for assaying the quantity of extracted evidential DNA. SRM 2372 can be used by qPCR manufacturers to calibrate their systems in the factory so that measurements made with the kits in forensic laboratories are consistently accurate. The SRM contains samples of human genomic DNA from three sources-an individual male, multiple female donors and a mix of male and female donors. Each sample has been prepared to yield an optical density (OD) of 1.0 on a spectrophotometer when examined using a 260-nanometer wavelength of light. Scientists have determined that for a solution of double-stranded DNA, an OD of 1.0 at 260 nanometers corresponds to 50 micrograms of DNA per milliliter of solution. More information about SRM 2372, including purchase data, may be found at NIST Source: Government Technology 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 |
