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In The News

2018-12-19 | Minnesota Panel Seeks Overhaul of Police Response to Sexual Assault
The blue-ribbon working group issued a 47-page report that makes a series of recommendations for the upcoming legislative session, and separate sets for law enforcement and prosecutors. They include improving investigations with mandatory standards, a focus on including victims and establishing a statewide coordinating council on sex crimes. It also calls for better training of police, more services for victims and audits of law enforcement responses to sex crimes. Swanson assembled the task force after an investigation by the Star Tribune found widespread lapses in how sexual assault cases are handled, including failures in police training and staffing. The newspaper said it found that chronic errors and failings plague most rape investigations in Minnesota, and repeat rapists often slip past police.

2018-12-13 | FBI plans ‘Rapid DNA’ network for quick database checks on arrestees
Though DNA has revolutionized modern crime fighting, the clues it may hold are not revealed quickly. Samples of saliva, or skin, or semen are sent to a crime lab by car (or mail), and then chemists get to work. Detectives are accustomed to waiting days or weeks, or longer, for the results. Some labs are so backed up, they take only the most serious crimes. Some samples are never tested. But a portable machine about the size of a large desktop printer is changing that. A “Rapid DNA” machine can analyze the DNA in a swab and produce a profile of 20 specific loci on the DNA strand in less than two hours. Some local police departments and prosecutors have been using Rapid DNA machines for about five years to solve crimes.

2018-12-10 | How the Absence of Blow Flies Overturned a Wrongful Conviction
I, and two other forensic entomologists whom I recommended, testified in front of a judge in October 2017. We all stated that insects would have been attracted to this body very rapidly and the lack of eggs suggested that death had occurred after sunset. Prosecution brought in a fourth entomologist who said you could not be absolutely sure. Two months later the court granted Lobato’s writ of habeas corpus and ordered a new trial based on our evidence, stating that Lobato’s lawyers were ineffective in not consulting an entomologist in the original trial. Ten days later, the court vacated Lobato’s conviction and dismissed all charges against her. Lobato was released “with prejudice,” meaning she cannot be retried.

2018-12-04 | Texas DNA Mixture Review Yields Recalculations of Cases
So far, the recalculations have yielded a single case where a convicted defendant was excluded from the genetic mixture—and five other cases where results changed in some meaningful way. “There are some convictions that may be undone—it’s hard to say,” said Bob Wicoff, appellate division chief of the Harris County Public Defender’s Office, who was involved in the work.

2018-11-27 | Ex-director promotes oversight panel as he criticizes State Police labs
The former director of the Michigan State Police forensic science division gave fiery testimony Tuesday about problems at the agency while pleading with lawmakers to support the formation of a commission to oversee the lab’s work. As director between 2010 and 2012, John Collins said he was forced to give first preference to troopers instead of scientists when jobs opened up and was told to rehire a “rogue scientist” fired for “knowingly falsifying data” because of binding arbitration.

2018-11-19 | Exonerated Man Sues Detective Over Blood Spatter Evaluation
Two months after the records request and at a cost of more than $700, the patrol turned over two reports comprising 11 pages. Before Attorney General Josh Hawley decided not to retry Jennings for murder this summer, his office hired a Kansas forensics company to independently review the case. The independent review ruled the blood spatter evidence in the Jennings case was inconclusive in determining if the death was homicide or suicide.

2018-11-14 | Court Ruling Could Erase 20,000 Drunken Driving Convictions
The justices unanimously found that criminal charges pending against a state police sergeant made breath-testing device test results from five counties inadmissible as evidence. Sgt. Marc Dennis was in charge of calibrating the devices, and authorities have alleged that he skipped a required step in the calibration process. Dennis has denied any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to records tampering and other charges. The court's decision means that as many as 20,667 DWI convictions could now be challenged, according to state authorities and the lawyer for the now-dead plaintiff who brought the case that the court ruled on.

2018-10-28 | DNA and fingerprinting advances led to speedy arrest in bombing case
Though stakes were high, all it took was for a team of law enforcement agencies to work together and find a single fingerprint and a small amount of DNA to track down Sayoc, an Aventura, Florida, man who boasted a long arrest history and is now being held at a federal detention center in downtown Miami.

2018-10-26 | Houston crime lab fires investigator after alleged testing policy violation
The Houston Forensic Science Center has fired a crime scene investigator who violated policy by using unapproved equipment that resulted in false negatives for biological evidence in at least two sexual assault cases, officials said Friday.

2018-10-07 | LAPD Doesn't Have The Resources To Dust For Fingerprints At Most Burglaries
In 2014, the department's fingerprint backlog exceeded 5,400 cases. At the time, Chief Beck attributed the backlog to a shortage of staff within the LAPD's Latent Print Unit. The department prioritized violent crimes, while property crimes took a backseat. "We can't get to every property crime. We just can't," LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese told the Times in 2014. These shortages remain a problem despite attempts to hire and train more staffers, so the department is "limited to sending only 10 fingerprint evidence kits to the crime lab every month for property offenses."