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SATI e-News: December 11, 2002
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In This
Issue: |
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Promising Practices: Message From
the Desk of SATI Training Director
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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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APRI
Offers Guidance on Ensuring Admissibility
of Digital Photo Evidence |
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As more law enforcement agencies and
forensic examiner programs convert to digital cameras in
evidence collection, the reliability of digital photography has
come under intensive scrutiny. While digital photography has
numerous benefits, including instant images, crisp detail and
decreased cost, defense attorneys have attacked the medium as
being easily manipulated and thus unreliable. In the absence of
solid precedents, the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI)
weighed in and offered guidance on this issue in their recent
newsletter.
In the article, APRI staff attorney, Christina Shaw, J.D.
reviews the few court precedents, including the Georgia Supreme
Court decision in Almond v. State, which found that the
procedure for admitting digital pictures was neither different
nor heightened over the procedure for admitting traditional
photos.
The APRI article also examines admissibility rulings in cases of
other forms of digital evidence, such as computer-generated
charts and graphs and enhanced digital fingerprints. The
Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that computer-generated
evidence is generated under certain conditions: 1) the computer
is functioning properly; 2) the input and underlying equations
are sufficiently complete and accurate; and 3) the appropriate
community of scientists generally accepts the program. Their
three-point test has been adopted by at least two other states,
according to Shaw.
Shaw offers the following guidance to investigators and
prosecutors to enhance the admissibility of digital technology:
1) Adopt a protocol or operating procedure for the handling of
all image evidence--whether it is digital, photographic or
video--to ensure consistent standards; 2) Always preserve the
original image in its original format by saving the image on a
hard drive, a CD or with image security software; and 3) Always
save enhancements of an image to a separate file, instead of
replacing the original document; and 4) Establish a reliable
chain of custody for handling all image evidence.
Finally, Shaw underscores the need for the prosecutor to
understand how his or her jurisdiction deals with issues of
authentication, requirements for an "original" and the
reliability of digital images, in order to craft the most
effective argument for admitting digital photographs.
Source:
"Admissibility of Digital Photographic Evidence: Should It Be
Any Different Than Traditional Photography?," by
Christina Shaw, J.D., published in the Newsletter of the
American Prosecutors Research Institute, National Center for
Prosecution of Child Abuse," Update, Vol. 15, November 10, 2002.
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Forensic
DNA News From Around the Country |
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The following news summaries in this
section are 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
Los Angeles Police Commission Delays DA's
Recommendation on Crime Lab
The LA Police Commission has delayed action on a suggestion by
the District Attorney to increase the amount of space allotted
for DNA analysis in the planned Regional Crime Lab Facility.
Under the current design, the DA contends the LAPD's half of the
lab will be too small to accommodate the technicians needed to
test all the DNA evidence from rapes and sexual assaults
projected in Los Angeles. Already, the department does not test
all DNA evidence that comes in from such cases, which requires
that it be sent out to private labs.
Original source, City News Service,
November, 19, 2002.
Houston, we have a problem
Work by the Houston Police Departments' crime lab will be
reviewed after a report by a local TV station that questioned
its findings in some cases. The plan includes asking the Harris
County District Attorney's Office to conduct an independent
analysis of the DNA samples in question, to perform an
independent review of the evidence handled internally by police,
and to continue to pursuing accreditation of the crime lab.
Houston is the largest city in the nation whose crime lab is not
accredited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory
Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board.
Original source: The Associated
Press State & Local Wire, November 16, 2002.
San Diego receives $3 million to
help fight crime
In California, San Diego County will receive nearly $3 million
in state grants for crime-fighting programs. The county Board of
Supervisors yesterday formally accepted the state money and
allocated it to the Sheriff's Department and the District
Attorney's Office. The DA's office will receive about $997,000
to continue various programs, including one that uses DNA
testing to re-examine old cases.
Original source: The San Diego Union
Tribune, November 13, 2002.
Lack of communication between Oregon
crime lab and detectives explains trail of unsolved cases
In Oregon, State Police crime lab DNA evidence that could have
been used to solve dozens of burglary cases failed to reach
Portland Police Bureau detectives for the past two years,
officials say. The state lab had matched DNA evidence retrieved
from burglaries to genetic profiles of 26 convicted felons and
forwarded that information to Portland police, but the reports
rarely made it to detectives. The problem was discovered in
August after police arrested a suspected burglar and the state
lab informed officers that DNA analysis had tied the same man to
two other burglaries that occurred at least a year earlier.
State forensic analysts told officers they had identified other
city burglers and were puzzled why police had not been pursuing
their leads. Since 2000, the state lab has obtained and analyzed
DNA evidence from 86 burglary cases in Portland and 33 of the
cases resulted in hits on the DNA database for 26 individual
suspects (some individuals were suspects in multiple cases) .
Original source: The AP
State & Local Wire, November 14, 2002.
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Florida
Rape Victim Sues City in Handling of Rape Case |
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A woman who was raped twice within a
month's time sued the city of New Port Richey, Florida, alleging
that police doubted her accounts of the assaults and failed to
properly investigate the cases, according to the St.
Petersburg Times. Just two months before the first attack,
the perpetrator, John Anthony Casteel, was released from a
14-year sentence for charges that included sexual battery.
The lawsuit names the city, as well as the department's chief
detective, Jackie Pehote, and the lead detective investigating
the first rape, William Barrus, claiming negligence and
intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The perpetrator first broke into the victim's home on December
5, 1998 and attacked the 41 year-old victim while she was
asleep. According to the Times, the victim's eye was
swollen shut and her mouth bloody with 15 broken teeth. The
victim says that police did not believe that she had been
brutally beaten, bound, gagged and raped at knifepoint by a
stranger.
The Times reported that four days after the first attack,
the case records reflect that Pehote told the woman she didn't
believe her. The woman alleges in the lawsuit that Pehote shared
her doubts with the victim's friends, even asking them to
encourage the woman to "tell the truth" to detectives. Two weeks
after the assault the investigation was declared inactive.
The victim installed a burglar alarm in her home. Less than a
month after the first assault, her alarm was triggered. Port
Richey dispatched police to her home, but they did not go
inside. Minutes later, prosecutors say, the rapist struck again.
The victim claims that police doubted the second assault as
well, and says that Pehote asked her, "How could you be so
stupid to move back into your house?" Pehote denies having made
that statement.
A review of public documents by the Times shows that
police still did little to investigate the case. It was not
until the victim spotted her assailant in a convenience store
four months later that any action was taken. A jury deliberated
one hour before convicting Casteel in August 2001, and he is now
serving a life sentence.
In a news report from the time Casteel was arrested (May 23,
1999), Barrus is quoted as saying, "We received some information
about this guy, and we started looking at this guy, and
everything fell together real nice." An internal investigation
later cleared Pehote of any wrongdoing, but faulted Barrus for
failing to submit the semen sample in a timely fashion.
Casteel's DNA had been in a state database since 1996.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $15,000.
Civil suits against government agancies in Florida are capped at
$100,000, unless the Legislature passes a special appropriations
bill for a larger award.
"Victim Sues in Handling of Rape," St. Petersburg Times,
November 19, 2002.
"Man Charged With Raping Woman Twice," St. Petersburg Times,
May 23, 1999.
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Prosecutors
Seek Reversal for Convictions in Central Park Jogger Rape |
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In April 1989, the rape of a white,
28 year-old stockbroker and Central Park jogger shocked the
country and made the term "wilding" a household word. Thirteen
years later, the country is stunned again, but this time by the
revelation that the five young black youths who were arrested
and convicted in this high profile case were apparently wrongly
accused.
By the time the real perpetrator was arrested in August 1989, he
had raped and murdered a 24-year old pregnant mother of three
and raped three other women, according to Women's enews (WEnews).
Last week, Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan's district attorney,
asked the judge to vacate convictions of the five young men
accused of the crime. Morgenthau was responding to a defense
motion, according to a press release from Morgenthau's office,
and was based on "newly
discovered evidence."
The DA's office revisited the case in May of this year when
Matias Reyes admitted to the crime after being convicted of
another rape. Reyes says he was the sole perpetrator in the
Central Park attack, and DNA testing confirmed his tie to the
crime. The WEnews speculates that had police compared the
DNA sample found at the Central Park crime scene to DNA evidence
from a string of rapes on Manhattan's Upper East Side, they
would have realized that all the rapes had been committed by the
same man.
The semen evidence recovered from the victim could not be traced
to the DNA of any of the five men who were originally convicted
in the case. The victim, who was in a coma and close to death
when found, was unable to recall any details of the attack. The
five youth ranged in age from 14 to 16 at the time of the
attack, and were convicted by two separate juries based largely
on their own "confessions," which conflicted greatly in
important details such as the weapon, descriptions of the
victim's clothing and her injuries.
A report on the case by Nancy E. Ryan, chief of trials in the
Manhattan DA's office, was critical of the police interrogation,
but said nothing about coercion or trickery, according to the
New York Times. Her report suggests that the young men may
have believed they were making statements as witnesses, but insodoing,
their testimony implicated them as accomplices. Ryan's report
did not attempt to assign blame for how it happened, nor did it
criticize any of the detectives and prosecutors who handled the
case, according to the Times.
The last of the defendants was released from prison in August.
The judge is expected to rule on the motion to vacate the
charges against the Central Park Five by February 6. The victim,
now 42, married and living in Connecticut, did not make a
statement about the latest developments in the case. She has
been writing a book about her recovery, entitled, "I Am the
Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility," which
will focus on her recovery, rather than the assault itself. She
plans to go public with her name upon the release of the book
next spring.
News Release from the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney,
December 5, 2002
Suspects' DNA Ignored in Central Park Jogger Case, Women's
Enews, December 5, 2002.
"Prosecutor Seeks the Reversal of Convictions In Jogger Case,"
New York Times, December 6, 2002.
"Reversals Sought in Central Park Jogger Case," Washington
Post, December 6, 2002.
"Leading Life in Private and Poised to Go Public," New York
Times, December 6, 2002.
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LoJack
Meets Scotland Yard;
U.K. Considers Chip Implants to Track Sex Offenders |
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Amidst a dramatic increase in
reports of child sexual abuse, the British government
acknowledged it is considering surgical implantation of
electronic chips to track pedophiles through satellite
technology. The Observer has obtained documents
indicating that the Home Office has already approached Compaq to
develop the software, and Tracker--the British equivalent of
America's Lo-Jack vehicle monitoring network--to handle the
tracking component.
Hilary Benn, the Minister responsible for supervision of sex
offenders, confirmed the report, and told The Observer
that her department is already developing technology to track
pedophiles constantly. Civil rights groups were outraged to
learn of the proposals outlined in the memos, which range from
tracking the movements of the pedophile, to monitoring their
bodily functions if they could be found to predict criminal
activity. The plan has yet to be debated by the British
Parliament, according to a Home Office spokesman, implying that
the implementation of this technology is still in doubt.
Sources: "Brits Mull Chipping Sex Offenders," Wired News,
November 19, 2002.
"Surgical Tags Planned for Sex Offenders," The Observer,
November 17, 2002.
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Promising
Practices: Message From the Desk of the SATI Training Director: NIJ Works to
address DNA Backlog |
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By Joanne Archambault, Founder and Training Director,
Sexual Assault Training & Investigations |
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Earlier this month, the National
Institute of Justice and the Institute for Law and Justice
hosted a DNA Evidence and Sexual Assault workshop in Washington
DC. The 36-member task force was asked to look at field-based
approaches to studying the cost effectiveness of DNA evidence
collection and analysis. Many of the participants were original
members of the National Commission on the Future of DNA.
The group was not only multi-disciplinary but included
practitioners with members representing survivors, the rape
crisis community, public defenders, prosecution, policy and
research, academia, the judiciary, law enforcement, forensic
examiners, and forensic science.
The dialogue was interesting and challenging. Not surprisingly,
I was assigned to the group tasked with addressing apprehension.
Our questions included:
- What are the anticipated
outcomes of using DNA to improve apprehension of the true
perpetrator?
- What activities are related to
using DNA evidence to improve apprehension of the true
perpetrator?
- What are the costs associated
with these activities?
Two other groups addressed the same questions as they relate to
prosecution and the court process, and victims and survivors.
My group quickly identified many of the benefits of DNA evidence
and analysis. A few of the benefits we listed were:
- Validation – for the victim,
protocols (i.e., the forensic examination), policies and
procedures (i.e., evidence collection and storage procedures),
and prosecution
- Credibility – for the victim,
the community, law enforcement and prosecution
- Evaluation of programs and the
effectiveness of those programs, i.e., the cost of the
forensic examination and its value
- Shattering myths about sexual
assault victims and sex offenders
- Solving cases, identifying and
exonerating suspects
- Saving lives
- Preventing sexual assault
- Successful prosecution
Costs were also fairly easy to
identify in that we recognized that many laboratories would need
to hire additional personnel or retrain personnel to analyze DNA
evidence and money to purchase new equipment. Increased
attention to forensic science has also encouraged many
laboratories to seek full accreditation, another costly and
labor-intensive process. In addition to the costs of DNA
analysis from the forensic unknown component, many states are
still working diligently to obtain and upload known offender
profiles into their state databases. Aside from the costs of
doing the actual DNA analysis, we also recognized the costs
associated with funding the forensic examination for survivors
and appropriately training law enforcement to correctly collect
the DNA evidence from crime scene(s) and suspects.
Although there was some disagreement as to who should be
included in a known offender database and some cautionary words
about not directing all sexual assault money to DNA analysis,
the group overwhelming agreed about the incredible benefits of
DNA analysis. How could anyone who knows anything about sexual
assault not see the benefit?
A friend of mine once said that her audiences’ eyes glaze over
just at the mention of DNA. If this is true, something is
dreadfully wrong. I waited my entire career to be where we are
today. States across the country are solving current sexual
assault cases and cold cases. Numerous people, mostly women and
children, would be alive today or at least would not have to
have been robbed of their life as they knew it, if law
enforcement had been able to analyze evidence that was available
at the time an attack was first reported to them.
The most difficult task in front of us was to measure the cost
effectiveness. I for one could not find the words. I have
difficulty evaluating how much it would be worth if the suspect
who sexually assaulted and killed two little boys in San Diego
had been identified, apprehended and convicted, after sexually
assaulting and killing a woman in Florida years earlier. How
much is it worth to a man who is wrongfully convicted and
exonerated by DNA? Fortunately, NIJ allowed us to identify the
costs with promises that they would continue to work on the cost
analysis. It’s moments like these that I feel lucky to be in the
law enforcement profession. In this case, my job is much easier. |
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For a list of upcoming
conferences and training events, please view the
Training Schedule. |
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