Since the February release of the National Acade­my of Sciences report on the state of forensic science, it is well known that forensic labs need better funding, should be accredited, and scientists should be certified. The following article is from NPR News and is a good example of the NAS report. Your comments matter! Thanks to Dave Khey for sending the article.

In Milwaukee, police say a mislabeled DNA sample made it possible for a suspected serial killer to avoid arrest for more than a decade.

The man — now charged with seven murders — might have been arrested before some of the murders occurred if state officials hadn’t lost his DNA sample.

The error revealed a gaping hole in Wisconsin’s DNA data bank and is spurring state officials to gather and verify thousands of DNA samples they thought were already in the system. In all, as many as 12,000 samples may be missing. In addition, other states are searching for similar flaws in their system for collecting and storing DNA.

A DNA sample from a crime scene can be a double-edged sword. If it’s matched correctly to a murderer, justice can be done. But if it’s lost or mislabeled, an innocent man may end up in prison.

In 2000, when Wisconsin began collecting DNA samples from all convicted felons, Walter Ellis was serving time for beating his girlfriend with a hammer. He managed to avoid having his sample taken by bribing another inmate to have his mouth swabbed instead and claim to be Ellis.

By the time the fraud was discovered, Ellis had left prison and the state did not have his DNA on file. Milwaukee prosecutors now say Ellis went on to murder at least seven women over the next decade.

Years Of Error

Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch says the deadly error resulted from a breakdown in communications between the two agencies responsible for handling DNA samples.

“Within a very short period it was discovered that a sample was given under another individual’s name,” said Raemisch. “Unfortunately that information was not given back to us by the Department of Justice — so it basically sat there, frankly, for years.”

This September, Milwaukee police linked an unknown DNA sample to nine different murders in the same Milwaukee neighborhood over the past 20 years. Ellis’ name kept coming up in the investigations, so his DNA sample was taken.

It matched DNA found on the bodies of nine women.

Ellis is now charged in seven of the murders. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle says the fatal glitch was the result of too few people trying to gather too much DNA.

“There were large sweeps of the prison system. In one month they took 19,000 samples,” said Ellis. “DNA [examiners] don’t just go and take a little sample and throw it in a machine and have a number — it’s a process that I think back in the early 2000s took several months to do.”
Link to the full NPR article

For link to previous posts about Forensics Under Fire click here and here

Update

Michael Jackson’s autopsy results came back with the findings that lethal doses of Propofol were found in his body. Jackson’s personal physician had been treating the king of pop for insomnia giving Jackson 50 milligrams of propofol every night using an intravenous drip. Read the story from the New York Times here.

Click here for previous comments about Jackson’s death.

Alcohol elimination

A Wilkes County man was sentenced to 33 years in prison without possibility of parole for the deaths of Harley and Helen Carter. The man, Ricky D. Norman was driving a truck traveling south on Old U.S. 21, when he collided with a car driven by the Carters. Not only Norman admitted that he was speeding, he also had been drinking and had cocaine in his system at the time of the crash. As a matter of fact he had been convicted of DUI three times and had a fourth DUI charge pending at the time of the accident. What caught my eye was the fact that the prosecution and defense experts differed as to whether he was legally drunk.

The trial lasted a week and much of the trial testimony involved experts who had opposing views about how intoxicated Norman was and how far he was from the intersection when Harley Carter pulled out in front of him. How could two experts do not agree on the alcohol level Norman had? Well, Norman had two broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a broken pelvis, a broken sternum, two broken bones in his left forearm and a broken right heel, and was taken to Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital. Due to his injuries, I guess, his blood was tested two hours after the accident and the test results showed Norman’s blood alcohol content was 0.03.

Paul Glover, an expert from the Forensic Tests for Alcohol Branch of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, testified Thursday that Norman’s blood alcohol content at the time of the wreck would have been 0.08. Glover used a technique called “retrograde extrapolation”. He said he determined a rate at which Norman’s body was eliminating alcohol, and calculated backward to determine the blood-alcohol level at the time of the wreck. A defense expert, Andrew Mason, told jurors that Norman’s blood-alcohol content would have fallen within a range of 0.05 to 0.09 at the time of the crash. For him, Glover’s determination is not scientifically supported, partially because people don’t eliminate alcohol at constant rates.

Before receiving his sentence, Norman said he was convicted because of his criminal record and not because of his responsibility for the fatal crash. He said he felt it was okay to drive after drinking four beers, that it wouldn’t bring him up to the legal limit which, in North Carolina, is 0.08.

I would love to hear from our faculty and students about how uncertain it would be to determine alcohol elimination rate. Are there any variables, maybe personal variables that need to be taken into account? 

Click here for more details on this story.

Latest news

There continue to be more questions than answers as we approach the one-month mark since the pop icon’s death. Since Michael Jackson’s autopsy reports are delayed, headlines go from those concerning Rupert Everett comments to the secret son of Michael Jackson.

In other news, the Los Angeles Times reported today a security breach involving staff members at the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Department. Six employees improperly viewed Michael Jackson’s death certificate hundreds of times in the two weeks immediately following the pop star’s death. Also, the Armstrong Medical Clinic, the clinic of Jackson’s personal cardiologist, Dr. Conrad Murray was raided yesterday. Dr. Murray has already been questioned twice by the Los Angeles Police Department and about three dozen officers participated on a search that ended up seizing a computer hard drive and more than 20 documents.

Two autopsy results are still pending and authorities are investigating several doctors and going after records that could shed light on Jackson’s death. Michael Jackson’s cause of death is still a mystery and the results of his autopsy probably won’t be known for another two weeks. Toxicology reports are going to become very important and results need to be interpreted in context of the artist medical history.

Jackson’s family members fear foul play whereas investigators are focusing on propofol (brand name Diprivan). Could propofol have played a role in Michael Jackson’s death? Are prescription drugs to blame or a mix of drugs? Did doctors play any role on Jackson’s death?

A psychiatric autopsy might also be performed. This type of study can provide clues about Jackson’s mental state prior to death.

Stay tuned, we will be posting updates.

This case has been portrayed as the “perfect crime” and in fact, it has not been solved yet. We are talking about the KaDeWe heist perpetuated last January in Germany. The Kaufhaus des Westens (usually abbreviated to KaDeWe) is a luxury seven floor department store in Berlin. It’s the second largest department store in Europe and it has been in business for more than 100 years (it was opened in 1907).
On January 25th, $7 million (€5 million) worth in jewelry and and luxury watches was stolen right in front of the surveillance cameras whose tapes later showed how three masked men slid down from a store skylight evading motion detectors and alarms. As Locard’s exchange principle states, perpetrators cannot avoid leaving traces of themselves at a crime scene and will always take something from the scene with them. That’s exactly what happened in the German crime scene: police found a discarded latex glove on which they found traces of DNA. Surprisingly, the genetic material didn’t match one suspect, it matched two brothers: Hassan and Abbas O. The O. brothers are identical twins and both had criminal records for fraud and theft and some reports link them to a Kurdish-Lebanese gang.
The O. brothers were arrested in February but they were released in March before the case could even come to trial. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence. Identical twins are clones from the genetic point of view and just like any living being, identical twins may eventually acquire, during their development, minor mutations in their DNA that might make them slightly different. Such subtle differences, if any, would not be detectable with the methods nowadays admissible in German courts. The court wrote in its statement that at least one of the brothers took part in the crime, but it has not been possible to determine which one and they were set free. To date, no additional evidence has been found and there is no trace of the loot,but at least, if new evidence arises, a new arrest warrant can be issued against the O. brothers.
Going back to Locard’s principle, criminals always leave with something from the scene. So the question here is whether the police were able to obtain search warrants for the twins’ home and other property. It’s hard to believe that there is no other evidence that could link Hassan and Abbas to the crime. What would you have done or suggested to solve this case? Was this “the perfect crime”? Share your thoughts!

Note: If you want to contribute to this blog, send us your ideas, articles and suggestions to forensicscienceblog@gmail.com

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In recent e-mail communication, this comment was made by one of our faculty:

“Much of what is said in the NPR report reflects what the National Research Council and many other institutions criticize of the current state of Forensic Sciences in the US and around the world. Forensic Science evolved as a side kick from various  disciplines including Medicine, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Toxicology among others. It is therefore not surprising that the unique applications of Forensic Sciences have not been standardized yet but rather been studied from the point of interest and with a special focus of its parent disciplines. It is time for the child to get on its own feet and evolve into its own discipline, establish its own standards and recognition. Programs such as ours at the University of Florida provide, support, and facilitate the basis for this coming-of-age development and maturation.”

I still criticize that too much misinformation is abound regarding the nuances of the study of the various forensic sciences.  The “CSI effect,” by and large, has not accumulated enough empirical support to suggest that the problem exists among jurors.  To the counterpoint, a large-scale study by Judge Donald Shelton (whose respondants were actual jurors) suggests the issue can be described a “tech effect” - a generalized expectancy of high tech evidenciary practices theorethically due to living in a high-tech and advanced world.

While academia, practitioners, and our students are all mindful of this, it helps to keep in mind that expressing the limitations of any empirical findings are paramount to evaluating research (or evidentiary findings).  The same holds in the courtroom.

Monopoly - Forensic labs have exclusive rights over evidence evidence in most circumstances.

Dependence bias - Forensic labs are dependent on law enforcement for funding… therefore forensic science is biased (pro-prosecution)

Insufficient quality control - Forensic labs are not required to be accredited by an independent accrediting agency.

No division of labor between analysis and interpretation - The individual(s) responsible for analyzing the data is the same that interprets the results.

Lack of forensic “counsel” - The poor cannot obtain forensic services, but have the right to an attorney. Many competent attorneys also cannot counter the pro-prosecution forensic results from a state/federal investigation

Lack of competition - State holds a monopoly on forensic science analyses, thus little competition exists.

While this is certainly not the first time people have been speaking out regarding some problematic aspects of forensic science, the efforts for reform are unmistakably becoming more organized. Most of points brought up in this column and in the report outlining these problems and potential resolutions are in effect misplacing blame and exerting it on the entire disciplines (yes, plural) of forensic science.

For starters, forensic science is not one unit, treating it as such only serves to blind people to the strong suits of specific analyses (gold standards, so to speak) and superb experts in their respective fields and lump all of the problematic methods and rogue “scientists” that have cropped up over the years.

But let’s not flush the baby with the bath water. Claiming that the vast majority of wrongful convictions are due to forensic error without any evidience surely does not sit well with any forensic scientist I know. I agree in that what we can do to help juries decide on their own is grant an independent forensic counsel to judges and juries to help interpret forensic results for those that essentially have defendants’ liberty in their hands to make intelligent decisions.

Announcement of Radio Address

During his weekly national radio address tomorrow, President Bush will release his 2008 National Drug Control Strategy. The 2008 Strategy highlights the historic declines in drug use achieved over the last seven years and encapsulates the many drug policy successes that are the result of concerted efforts at the local, State, Federal, and international levels. The President will also highlight challenges that remain, particularly prescription drug abuse. President Bush will outline the next steps the Federal government can take to help reduce the diversion and abuse of prescription drugs, and issue a call to action for all Americans to continue working to safeguard young people, families, and communities from the harms of substance abuse.

Tune in tomorrow, Saturday, March 1st at 10:00 AM to hear the President release the 2008 National Drug Control Strategy during his weekly national radio address, or visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080301.html.

NY Times “Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System”

More of what we already know, but it’s good to see encouraging words in print.

The fallout seems to be impending as the word spreads across campus and some local media outlets. Decide for yourself: were the police correct to utilize their tasers, or was physical restraint ample for the level of resistance the student was displaying?

http://video.nbc6.net/player/?id=157250#videoid=157250

UPDATE: Some students are organizing a protest today (8/18) - will try to take pictures and report back. Also, it was reported this morning that this is the same student that held up a sign that said “HARRY DIES” right after this last Harry Potter book came out. See:

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20070722/LOCAL/707220317

In fact, it looks like he’s wearing the same shirt! But I cannot confirm that just yet.