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Please see our “Did You Know?” section toward the end of this issue. Making headlines again is the state of Virginia, with a $4.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to be used for a study to find people who may have been wrongfully convicted a number of years ago.
In West Virginia the Marshall University Forensic Science Center is providing DNA analysis on evidence from property crimes for the Huntington Police Department, under a project named the Huntington Property Crime Initiative. This project is aimed at determining “the short- and long-term benefits of DNA testing in helping to identify suspects in a property crime.”
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 NewsJustice Department gives Virginia $4.5 million for groundbreaking DNA study
The Virginia Department of Forensic Science has been awarded $4.5 million for a DNA study aimed at finding people who may have been wrongly convicted decades ago.
It is one of five grants totaling more than $7.8 million announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs. The other four went to Arizona, Kentucky, Texas and Washington.
Virginia's groundbreaking program is testing biological material discovered in forensic case files kept by state serologists from 1973 to 1988.
Source: www.inrich.com
Marshall Forensics teams up with policeThe Marshall University Forensic Science Center is providing DNA analysis on evidence from property crimes for the Huntington Police Department in a collaborative effort with the West Virginia State Police and Cabell and Wayne county prosecutors.
The Forensic Science Center, part of Marshall's medical school, is providing the forensic DNA testing services for the project at no cost through federal funding secured by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd.
The agencies joined forces to investigate and prosecute property crimes within the jurisdiction of the Huntington Police Department. The partnership is under a one-year agreement called the Huntington Property Crime Initiative to determine the short- and long-term benefits of DNA testing in helping to identify suspects in a property crime and whether multiple property crimes can be linked to a single perpetrator.
Source: www.herald-dispatch.com New and Ongoing Stories Involving the Use of DNA EvidenceTexas - More than 20 years ago, Gerald Pabst escaped prosecution after blaming his brother-in-law for sexually assaulting and fatally shooting a Garland woman.
But after DNA results last year connected the rape of Galua Crosby to Mr. Pabst, prosecutors turned their attention to him.
Today, jury selection is expected to begin in Mr. Pabst's capital murder trial.
Source: www.dallasnews.com
Nevada - A California man has been arrested on a warrant charging him in a 2003 fatal shooting, after genetic evidence recovered from a cigarette butt at the crime scene matched his DNA profile in a national database.
Deyundrea Holmes, 30, was booked into the Washoe County Jail on suspicion of murder and robbery with a firearm and held without bail. Reno police detectives arrested him Thursday in a California county jail where he was being held on the warrant charging him in Kristopher Nelson's murder.
Source: www.mercurynews.com
California - DNA evidence has helped prosecutors convict a prison parolee of raping and murdering a San Jose woman almost 30 years ago.
A Santa Clara County jury found 56-year-old Timothy William Brown guilty Thursday of raping, beating and stabbing to death 42-year-old Virginia Correa.
Brown was charged with Correa's murder two years ago after a DNA test linked him to the crime. Police say Brown's DNA matched a semen stain on Correa's clothing.
Source: www.mercurynews.com
Texas - A 56-year-old man who spent 25 years behind bars for a rape he says he didn't commit walked out of court a free man on Friday after a judge recommended his aggravated rape conviction be overturned.
Johnnie Earl Lindsey said he wrote six letters to a Dallas County court seeking post-conviction DNA testing that could prove his innocence.
He becomes the 20th man in Dallas County proven innocent by DNA testing since 2001, although one of those men will be retried by prosecutors. Those 20 cases are a national high for one county, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center specializing in wrongful conviction cases.
Source: ap.google.com
California - A convicted rapist was found guilty Wednesday of five counts of first-degree murder for killing three women and two teenage girls during a three-month period in the East Bay in 1985.
Anthony McKnight, a 54-year-old former Navy sailor who is already serving 63 years in prison for raping and trying to murder three women, was also found guilty of five special circumstances, including murder committed in the course of rape and sodomy and multiple murder.
No one was arrested in the killings until DNA evidence left on the victims' bodies or clothes linked McKnight to the slayings in the late 1990s.
Source: www.sfgate.com
Wisconsin - DNA analysis has connected a 27-year-old man to a burglary scene through an unusual item: some sweat socks.
Source: www.chicagotribune.com
California - An Oakland man faces life in prison without parole after being convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a woman more than a decade ago.
Authorities connected 58-year-old Willie Latimore to the case in 2005, after he was forced to give a DNA sample following a robbery conviction.
The DNA proved to be a match to evidence taken from the body of 35-year-old Gwendolyn Evans, who was found beaten, raped and stabbed in an abandoned East Oakland apartment on Nov. 11, 1994.
Source: www.mercurynews.com
Pennsylvania - Prosecutors are hoping that a cigarette butt and a plain white envelope will persuade a jury to convict Mark Matthew Fisher of participating in a home invasion in 2003 that left an 89-year-old Venetia woman dead.
Fisher, 24, of Texarkana, Ark., was charged with murder in December 2006 after DNA from a cigarette butt found outside the Dale home six days after the attack was traced back to him through a national system.
Jeffrey Fumea, forensic science supervisor at the state police crime lab in Greensburg, testified to Fisher's DNA match. He also testified that Fisher could not be ruled out as the source of another DNA sample that was found on duct tape that was on the pants worn by Freda Dale but said he could not confirm that it was Fisher's DNA.
Florida - Blood left behind after a man smashed a car window with a brick led police to charge him in several auto burglaries Wednesday.
Sylvester Epps, 46, of Tampa was being held at Orient Road Jail today on $23,000 bail. He is charged with three counts each of felony burglary and felony grand theft. Four of those charges were added Wednesday after his initial arrest Aug. 31 in an auto burglary, records show.
An officer visited Epps in jail Wednesday and talked to him about the DNA results and similar burglaries. He first confessed to the June burglary and the one on Aug. 31 and then confessed to four others, police said.
Source: www2.tbo.com
Illinois - Police said they used a blood sample at a crime scene to track down a would-be safecracker, a 21-year-old Woodstock resident who was charged Wednesday with burglary.
Source: www.nwherald.com
Florida - New Port Richey police got the evidence Monday to arrest a man accused of raping a woman in July.
That evidence: DNA tests linking James Christian Cregger to semen found on the victim, a 36-year-old woman who knew him. The woman reported the attack in July, but without enough evidence at the time, police were only able to hold Cregger, 37, on a probation violation until Aug. 1.
After the DNA results came back, police arrested Cregger.
Source: www.tampabay.com In The NewsGreat Britain - Euro cops using Britain's National DNA DatabasePolice forces across Europe are checking Britain’s National DNA Database to crack unsolved crimes in their own countries.
Foreign cops are liaising with experts at the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham who manage the database on behalf of the Home Office.
And in the case of the most serious crimes, Midland scientists may help the foreign investigations by checking samples gathered abroad against those on the NDNAD.
There are around four million DNA samples held in Birmingham which have been taken from people arrested on suspicion of a crime – no matter what level the offence.
Source: www.sundaymercury.net
Great Britain - Police are hunting four armed men who were sprayed with a special DNA paint as they fled from a failed supermarket robbery in Salford.
Source: www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Did You Know?Landers Lab Micro-Sizes Genetics Testing
September 18, 2008 — Using new "lab on a chip" technology, James Landers hopes to create a hand-held device that may eventually allow physicians, crime scene investigators, pharmacists, even the general public, to quickly and inexpensively conduct DNA tests from almost anywhere, without need for a complex and expensive central laboratory.
For more information please go to: www.virginia.edu
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 |
