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

In the news: After four men have had their entire DNA decoded, a 34 year old Dutch scientist is the first woman to join  them, and results are to be published in the near future.

In Mississippi the state’s Innocence Project is examining 80 cases of potential forensic fraud.

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

First woman gets DNA sequence decoded 

It's been a small club and a boy's club so far:  until recently, only four men worldwide have had their entire DNA decoded.

Now, a woman has joined their ranks. DutchNews reported that a red haired, 34 year old scientist, Marjolein Kreik of Leiden University, has had her complete DNA sequenced.

Results will be published soon, according to fellow professor Gert-Jan van Ommen, who made the announcement Monday at a press conference.

Of particular interest to scientists will be learning more about DNA variations on the double X chromosomes that all women possess.

For more on this story please go to:

 Source: www.chicagotribune.com

Innocence Project checking 80 cases

The state's Innocence Project is examining about 80 cases of potential forensic fraud, said director W. Tucker Carrington on Wednesday.

Most of those involve testimony from either Dr. Steven Hayne, Mississippi's primary forensic pathologist, or Dr. Michael West, a forensic dentist based in Hattiesburg, Carrington said.

He said the state needs to pass legislation that would mandate the preservation of DNA samples, allow felons to request post-conviction DNA testing and compensate for wrongful convictions. Ultimately, he said, DNA testing helps law enforcement get the right person.

Area legislators say Carrington's ideas should be considered.

For the full story please go to:

Source: www.hattiesburgamerican.com

New and Ongoing Stories Involving the Use of DNA Evidence

Florida - It was a smoking gun of sorts, a DNA-laced BB gun that was the centerpiece of a rape charge against a Bradenton man.

Brian Scott Harden's wife told prosecutors that Harden raped her twice - including once at gunpoint. Harden was looking at spending the rest of his life in prison.

There was DNA on the pistol, yes, but it did not belong to Harden. The fluid was that of another man, the felon who was dating Harden's 30-year-old wife.

"Brian was arrested by the police and exonerated by science," defense attorney Mark Lipinski said Friday.

Source: www.heraldtribune.com

Ohio - A man who did odd jobs as a teenager for a woman who was killed nearly 18 years ago has been charged with complicity to murder because improved DNA testing shows he was at the crime scene, police said.

James Hollis, 37, of Circleville, also was charged with complicity to rape and is being held on $3 million bond.

Police say they always suspected that he was involved in the death of Mary Cook, 83, in July 1990.

Last September, the recovered DNA connected Hollis to the scene, and a second lab confirmed the results, prosecutors said.

Source: www.ohio.com

Chicago - DNA testing has exonerated a Chicago man of a rape conviction that has kept him in prison for more than 12 years.

Forty-one-year-old Dean Cage was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 40 years for allegedly assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 1994.

The New York-based Innocence Project says the Cook County state's attorney's office dismissed Cage's conviction after DNA tests eliminated him as the attacker.

He is the 29th person in Illinois exonerated by post-conviction DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project.

Source: www.wpsdtv.com

Pennsylvania - Two partners in crime took cash and computer hard drives but forgot to take out their trash, police say. That was in 2004.

The trash -- empty soda bottles -- ended up containing forensic evidence that would lead state police back to one of the alleged thieves four years later.

Arthur John Seitz III, 30, of Bethlehem and Isaac Mayberry, 34, of Allentown were charged last week with burglary and related crimes in the Aug. 26, 2004, break-ins at Union United Church of Christ and Union Lutheran Church.

The State Police Forensic Services Unit found three empty soda bottles at the scene that were swabbed for DNA. In August 2007, a random search turned up a match for one of the samples -- Seitz, who along with Mayberry was on parole from a 2006 conviction.

Source: www.mcall.com

Tennessee - A federal judge has given Tennessee until June 17 to retry or free a death row inmate who the U.S. Supreme Court said two years ago likely isn't guilty.

Paul House has been in limbo while a prosecutor battles efforts to have him retried.

Federal judges have done as the high court ordered and reviewed his murder case. They concluded new evidence raises reasonable doubt about the 46-year-old's guilt.

The Supreme Court concluded in June 2006 that reasonable jurors wouldn't have convicted House if they had seen DNA tests.

Source: ap.google.com

Minnesota - The family of a Minneapolis woman who was strangled and left in a ditch near Northfield in 2005 said Tuesday that the recommended 26-year-prison term for the killer isn't enough.

 Antonio Medina, 34, pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree intentional murder in the death of Laura Lynn DeMeules, 33, said Rice County Attorney Paul Beaumaster.

 The case went unsolved for two years until Medina was convicted in Hennepin County of a felony drunken driving charge and his DNA sample was submitted to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in December 2007; sending a DNA sample to the bureau is routine for felons. In January, his profile matched that of an unknown DNA sample found on a fingernail clipping taken from DeMeules' body.

 Source: www.startribune.com

Arkansas - Fort Smith police have arrested a man on suspicion of aggravated robbery after DNA evidence linked him to the robbery last summer of a check-cashing business.

Police say Ace Cash Express in Fort Smith was robbed June 7 by a man who apparently broke into the building by cutting a hole in the wall and waited for the store to open, before confronting an employee.

Fort Smith police announced that they've arrested 38-year-old Anthony B. Williamson for the crime after DNA gathered from drops of blood left at the store were linked to him.

Source: www.wxvt.com

Texas - Prosecutors said Friday that new testing of DNA evidence no longer connects a man sent to death row for a 1993 child slaying that led to the creation of tough sex offender laws, and a state district judge recommended a new trial.

Collin County prosecutors stopped short of saying Michael Blair is innocent of killing strangling and molesting 7-year-old Ashley Estell. But they said evidence used in his 1994 conviction no longer holds up, and acknowledged that another man may have committed the crime.

Blair will remain in prison no matter the outcome. He was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in the sexual assaults of other children in the early 1990s.

Ashley Estell's death prompted state lawmakers to pass tough sexual-predator measures called "Ashley's Laws" that require longer prison terms and public registration for sex offenders.

Source: www.chron.com

Washington DC - A Vermont man was convicted yesterday in the rape and murder of Arlington native Michelle Gardner-Quinn, a committed environmentalist whose disappearance attracted national attention from celebrities and a network of close friends.

Jurors in Rutland, Vt., found Brian R. Rooney guilty in the October 2006 slaying of Gardner-Quinn, 21, a University of Vermont student who had a chance encounter with Rooney when she borrowed his cellphone, according to Laurie Canty, manager for Rutland District and Family Court. Rooney, 37, a construction worker and father of three, faces a mandatory life prison term.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Florida - Following an unexpected DNA trail, detectives arrested a Riverview woman Thursday and accused her of leaving a newborn baby in a trash bin in Lakeland two years ago. The baby died.

Kami Sargent, 41, was charged with aggravated manslaughter. Detectives said her DNA matches that of the placenta found with the dead baby girl in the trash bin on Lewellyn Road on May 9, 2006.

The break in the case came in November, when Sargent was placed on probation in Polk County for driving without a license Nov. 11. At that time, police took a DNA swab from her and placed it in a DNA database.

Source: www2.tbo.com

Connecticut - A former security guard pleaded no contest to murder charges Thursday in the strangling deaths of three women in the 1990s.

Emanuel Lovell Webb, 42, was charged two years ago with killing the women after authorities say DNA in a cold case investigation linked him to the crimes.

Webb was already in custody in a Georgia jail when he was charged in 2006 with strangling 34-year-old Elizabeth "Maxine" Gandy to death in 1992 in Bridgeport, where Webb used to live. Detectives said they also used DNA to link him to the deaths of Sharon Cunningham, 39, Minnie Sutton, 37, and Sheila Etheridge, 29.

Source: ap.google.com

Washington - Jurors have convicted a former country singer known as "Cowboy Mike" of rape and first-degree murder in the death of a Lacey woman.

Michael John Braae, 48, was found guilty Thursday in Thurston County Superior Court for the 2001 killing of Lori Jones, 44. Authorities said Braae's DNA was found on Jones' body, and his fingerprint was on a window blind at her apartment.

Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com

New York - A Huntington Station man has been convicted of a 2003 rape in Jericho after DNA evidence tied him to the assault, the Nassau district attorney's office said Monday.

Ronald Diggs, 36, was found guilty Friday by a Nassau County jury of first-degree rape, first-degree unlawful imprisonment, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree menacing.

Source: www.newsday.com

Did You Know?

DNA in dust 'may trap criminals'

DNA in household dust may in the future be used to trap murderers and thieves by proving they were at a crime scene at a certain time.

For the first time, scientists have been able to identify human DNA in dust.

Although the amount recovered is tiny, further research could turn it into a vital tool for investigators.

For instance, the rate of decay of the DNA sample may enable police and forensic scientists to work out how recently a person had visited a crime scene.

Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, America, collected dust from various rooms around their campus, including busy classrooms and quieter offices.

Along with DNA from bacteria and fungi, human DNA was found in all but one of the 36 samples.

Overlapping signals from many different people made it virtually impossible to pick out any one individual's DNA profile.

However, advancing technology may overcome this obstacle in the future, say the scientists.

"People have quantified the amount of DNA in dust many times before, but no-one had looked before for human DNA," Bonnie Brown, co-leader of the team, told New Scientist.

Source: ukpress.google.com

 

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