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In The News

2013-12-27 | Rape Victims Sue Police Over Decade-Long Rape Kit Backlog
Some victims say they have waited more than 10 years for the city to process their rape kits, which they say is a violation of their civil rights. The victims argue they have the right to file suit against the police department because it violated their rights to equal protection as granted under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by not processing the rape kits in a timely manner.

2013-12-19 | Gotcha! FBI launches new biometric systems to nail criminals
Nearly 80 years after it began collecting fingerprints on index cards as a way to identify criminals, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is moving to a new system that improves the accuracy and performance of its existing setup while adding more biometrics. By adding palm print, face and iris image search capabilities, the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) hopes to improve the accuracy of identity searches, make it easier to positively identify and track criminals as they move through the criminal justice system and provide a wider range of tools for crime scene investigators.

2013-12-18 | State police analyze backlog of 4,000 rape kits
Three years ago, after learning that numerous police departments were failing to take a basic first investigative step and analyze DNA evidence from reported sex crimes, Illinois became the first state to mandate testing, even in older cases in which rape kits had sat untested for years.

2013-12-12 | Fingerprint match leads to arrest in 2-year-old Olympia gas station robbery attempt
Latent fingerprints taken from a counter top more than two years ago after an attempted armed robbery at the 76 gas station on Pacific Avenue in Olympia led to Tuesday's arrest of a 22-year-old man in connection with the crime.

2013-12-10 | Genetic Differences between 'Identical' Twins Discovered
Eurofins Scientific, a European leader in Genomics Services, Forensics and Paternity Testing, has announced a milestone in genetic and forensic research. A multidisciplinary Eurofins team in the Eurofins flagship Genomics laboratory in Ebersberg, Germany, has successfully completed a research project to genetically discriminate “identical” monozygotic twins. So far there have been only theoretical considerations against the experimental finding and dogma that monozygotic twins are genetically fully identical. Statistically, around 6 of 1,000 males are identical twins. Up to now, forensic DNA fingerprinting testing could not be used in crime or paternity cases involving identical twins, as there was no possibility of genetically discriminating between them. Such cases are regularly discussed in the World’s press, including murder, child custody and heritage cases.

2013-11-03 | Study of Victim Experiences of Wrongful Conviction
Over the past three decades, the rate of exonerations has more than doubled, growing from an average of 24 per year from 1989 through 1999 to an average of 52 per year from 2000 through 2010 (Gross & Shaffer, 2012). While significant strides have been made to identify and assist wrongfully convicted individuals in gaining their freedom and transitioning to life after exoneration, little is known about the experiences of victims during this process.

2013-10-30 | Oakland Police Have Prioritized Drug Crimes Over Homicides
OPD crime lab director Mary Gibbons informed the city council's Public Safety Committee last month that the department had 659 homicide cases in which it still had evidence that needed testing. Furthermore, homicide investigations are in such disarray that the lab has no idea which of the cases with unexamined evidence have been closed or adjudicated. Gibbons also presented a report that made it clear OPD's crime lab has been running at below capacity for the past seven years. "Some of these cases are very, very old. Whether they've been adjudicated or not, no one's bothered to tell us," she said.

2013-10-07 | Amherst drug lab chemist shocked to learn of allegations of tampering against Sonja Farak
Employees from the now-closed Amherst drug laboratory testified they had no idea that one of their colleagues Sonja Farak was allegedly tampering with drug evidence that sent dozens of people to jail, but said there were some questionable procedures at the lab where she worked. In a hearing before Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder, a fellow chemist who worked side-by-side with Farak and her supervisor testified Monday to their shock of learning about the accusations. The hearing in Hampden Superior Court broke for lunch during James Hanchett’s testimony.

2013-09-26 | Crime Lab Backlog Delays DNA Match in Serial Rapes
DNA matches enabled investigators of a sexual assault at a Riverside massage parlor to discover the pattern of a serial rapist, but getting those lab results took more than two years, according to Riverside Police. After submitting a sample to California's Department of Justice in late 2009, Riverside detectives were notified in 2012 of matches to four other assaults in massage businesses in two neighboring counties, said Detective Aurelio Melendrez of the Riverside Police Department. Riverside investigators already had security camera video of the perpetrator from their case. They acquired additional video from the victimized massage businesses in Corona and from San Bernardino County, and at one point identified a suspect. But his DNA did not match that recovered at the five crimes.

2013-09-01 | Crime labs under the microscope after a string of shoddy, suspect and fraudulent results
The review, then about half complete, had already turned up 26 cases in which the former technician failed to detect the presence of DNA evidence, including one in which the evidence has since led to an arrest in a 10-year-old rape case. The review uncovered 19 cases in which DNA evidence was commingled with DNA evidence from other cases.