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SATI e-News:
December 11, 2002
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Prosecutors'
Latest Tool: Animal DNA |
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Prosecutors in the U.S. are
increasingly using blood, hair and saliva drawn from household
pets to secure convictions. In the last four years, 14
defendants in Washington state, Oklahoma, California,
Pennsylvania, Iowa and New Mexico have been convicted of violent
crimes based in part on DNA drawn from the blood or hair of a
dog that was at the crime scene.
In September, a San Diego jury recommended that a man be
sentenced to death after DNA tests linked hair found in his
trailer home to a Weimaraner owned by the victim. Canadian
authorities scored the first murder conviction based on animal
DNA in 1996 by linking a bloodstained coat owned by the victim's
ex-husband to hair from his cat. Defense attorneys say labs that
perform animal DNA tests lack the state and federal standards
required of labs that do human DNA tests. They also note that
the inbreeding used to produce purebred dogs and some cat lines
can reduce genetic diversity and increase the likelihood that a
DNA sample could match several different animals. But scientists
say that any shortcomings in pet DNA evidence are rapidly being
overcome by new research. Since 1999, researchers at the
National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland have been
helping the Justice Department develop a database of cat DNA
that can match samples with an accuracy of hundreds of millions
to one.
Source:
Reprinted with permission from the November 22, 2002 issue of
DNA Legislation & News, published by Smith Alling Lane, a
government affairs firm that provides nationwide governmental
affairs services to Applied Biosystems:
http://www.dnaresource.com. Original source, article in
USA Today, November 7, 2002. |
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