DNA is unique to everyone, except identical twins. It is a genetic marker more precise than fingerprints that is in every part of every body — in tissue, blow, hair, skin and bodily fluids.
The FBI maintains the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, in which stores DNA profiles submitted by state and local law enforcement nationwide. It is through that system that law enforcement agencies and prosecutors have confirmed suspects’ roles in crimes and identified suspects who, until then, were unknown.
The science is so advanced now that even old or degraded samples of fluids or other DNA evidence is accepted unchallenged in courts.
The 20,000 rape kits stored at the State Crime Lab are for cases that either pre-dated DNA or happened in the 1990s when the science was not perfected so it was of little help in bringing a case. But the Crime Lab is unable to say what it has. Bar codes have been assigned to 10,000 bags of evidence, meaning their location in the evidence room can be confirmed, as long as there is a name of a victim or suspect. In other 10,000 cases, lab staff must search through the thousands of bags of evidence, looking for the name of the case on the outside.
What we know about the 10,000 rape kits that have not been cataloged — Law enforcement and the Innocent Project think there could be evidence that could exonerate the wrongly convicted or identify suspects in other unsolved crimes.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution learned of the State Crime Lab’s 20,000 rape kits stored in the basement of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation headquarters while pursuing a story about a suspected serial rapist who had been implicated in at least eight metro Atlanta rapes from the 1980s. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will continue to follow the applications for grants to catalog the evidence and if the old evidence in the kits areused to solve any cold cases or exonerated any innocent people.
Stored in a cold, tightly secured vault at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation headquarters are almost 20,000 swabs taken in sexual assault cases decades ago, in the years before DNA matching became a viable crime-fighting tool.
Now two different factions of the criminal justice system want the DNA material contained on those swabs organized into a searchable database. Prosecutors say the information may be useful in solving long-forgotten crimes. The Georgia Innocence Project, formed to help individuals who have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, says the swabs could exonerate those wrongly convicted.
The Innocence Project has applied for two grants, one in collaboration with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, that could make the database reality.
DNA evidence has become an indispensable tool for solving crimes over the past two decades, as court systems across the country now accept the science as virtually unassailable evidence. Except for identical twins, each person’s DNA is unique.
That means the GBI’s vault, which contains specimen from the 1980s and ’90s, is a “treasure trove of truth,” said Aimee Maxwell, executive director of the Georgia Innocence Project. “There’s some real evidence that can be tested.”
Sorting out what’s there could mean freedom for those who should never have been convicted, and prison for some who escaped punishment decades ago.
Last month in Georgia, for example, Atlanta police announced that the State Crime Lab had matched DNA collected in eight sexual assault cases from as far back as the mid-1980s to a 62-year-old man now in a federal prison in Kentucky. So far, Daniel Wade has been indicted in five Atlanta cases, and detectives are still working three in Gwinnett and DeKalb Counties.
Major Myron Logan of the sex crimes unit of the DeKalb Police Department said it’s a “magical moment” when a detective can call a victim to report a suspect has been identified through DNA, even though decades have passed since the crime.
At the same time, DNA evidence has cleared the wrongly convicted like Willie O. “Pete” Williams, who spent 22 years in prison for 1985 Fulton County rape.
Soon after Williams was released from prison in 2007, another man was taken into custody because the DNA said he was the rapist in that case.
“Prosecutors … are here to seek justice and not just get convictions,” said Chuck Spahos, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. “Not a prosecutor in this state … wants to see somebody in prison for a crime they did not commit. The other side of this (is) … there may be some DNA evidence in the collected evidence that’s never been tested and it can be compared against (the) existing data base.”
In the past decade, Georgia has provided DNA "profiles" in 13,000 sexual assaults to the FBI's national Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. With current cases, the lab doesn't have the capacity, time or staff to catalog and test old evidence.
Last year, the State Crime Lab analyzed 597 DNA samples from sexual assaults cases alone. In 2011, the lab analyzed 700 samples of DNA collected in the investigations of some of the 2,050 rapes reported that year.
Only two police departments have secured federal grants to electronically catalog evidence similar to what is being attempted in Georgia. The New York Police Department and the New Orleans Police Department are well into documenting evidence, though their programs are not limited to DNA samples.
“Over the years, it’s been difficult to locate evidence, so we’ve had to put a lot of cases on hold,” said Paul Cates, spokesman for the Innocence Project based in New York. “Having the ability to now go in and see if there is evidence that could potentially exonerate someone is tremendously useful to us. “
At the same time, Cates said, “There is a potential to solve cold cases.”
In the basement vault at the Georgia Crime Lab, bags of DNA evidence are neatly stored in clear plastic bins. In one section, there are almost 10,000 bags with bar-codes that will allow lab workers to search the computer, using a name, to figure out where they are. Another 10,000 stored on nearby shelves have not been cataloged, so knowing what is or isn't there is impossible without a manual search.
“The evidence isn’t easily accessible,” said GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang.
There is no index so it’s very labor-intensive, said GBI deputy director George Herrin, who oversees the Crime Lab.
“If we can’t find it in there, we have to manually search those boxes in the vault,” he said.
The intention is not to do wholesale DNA analysis of the swabs.
The Innocence Project has applied for a $650 grant from the State Bar of Georgia to pay for a computer program that will allow the Crime Lab to simply run a list of the cases that the Lab has evidence stored for.
“All I want is a list,” Maxwell said of the purpose of the grant request pending with the Bar Association.
A second grant request to the National Institute of Justice is for $605,000 to pay for lawyers to pull police reports on the old cases in which the Innocence Project and the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council think DNA analysis could make a difference.
In Virginia, a man convicted of rape was exonerate by DNA evidence that supposedly had been destroyed but was found. The governor then ordered evidence from 31 sexual assault cases re-examined, and two more men were exonerated. Eventually, the governor ordered all cases reviewed, a program still in the works.
Ambrust said the problem there is no pre-screening was done to weed out the cases that should not be tested — such as the cases in which the victim is dead or the convicted person has accepted guilt. That made it an expensive exercise.
“The project in Virginia had all the pitfalls,” Ambrust said.
Still, she said, people were exonerated and the authorities identified “the real perpetrators.”
“It’s clearing innocent people and getting the right people,” she said.
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