North Carolina lab to be examined

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/us/06brfs-CRIMELABTOBE_BRF.html

A North Carolina crime laboratory is going to be examined by two former assistant directors of the FBI. More specifically, its operations in relation to cases dating back to the early 1990s are going to be reviewed. This is happening because recent revelations about practices there led to freedom for man who had wrongly been convicted of murder. The article does not specify what those revelations were, but explained about the case. Last month, Gregory F. Taylor was freed after a three judge panel found convincing evidence that he was innocent. His conviction was on the basis of flawed evidence and unreliable testimony. Taylor had served 16 years in prison before his release.

Vindication now arrives after a battle of 28 years

He had proclaimed his innocence, to no avail, at his trial and sentencing and in his five years behind bars. And when he was released from prison, Freddie Peacock, a churchgoing Rochester, N.Y., man with severe mental illness, persisted in what would become the defining mission of his difficult life: convince the world that he was not, in fact, guilty of rape. “He talked about it all the time,” said his older sister, Edith Leonard. “Sometimes I would say to myself, ‘He needs to let it go,’ because it would constantly eat him up and it worried me.” But for the next 28 years, Mr. Peacock refused to drop the subject, professing his innocence to anyone who would listen: family and friends, those who never doubted him and those who were not so sure. He even begged his parole officer not to release him from state supervision, fearing the action would undermine his many appeals. On Thursday, sitting stoically in the same courthouse where long ago he was convicted of a rape he did not commit, Mr. Peacock, 60, received the exoneration he so passionately sought. With barely a comment, Judge David D. Egan of the State Supreme Court in Rochester vacated the 1977 conviction in the face of new DNA testing that proved Mr. Peacock’s innocence. Neither the judge nor the prosecutor directly addressed Mr. Peacock during the five-minute procedure, and neither offered an apology. Mr. Peacock spoke only once, at the end. “Thank you, Your Honor,” he said. It was not until leaving the courtroom that Mr. Peacock, dressed in a gray suit, was overtaken by the emotion of the moment. He sat down and began to cry. He walked to the courthouse lobby, where the tears resumed and he sat down again to compose himself. “He wouldn’t let this go,” Ms. Leonard said on behalf of her brother, who declined to speak to reporters. “Maybe now he can go on with his life.” Ms. Leonard said she was not sure whether the family would file a lawsuit. “We’re going to get through today,” she said. “After that, I really don’t know.” The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, a nonprofit group that uses DNA evidence to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, took on Mr. Peacock’s case after receiving a nine-page, handwritten letter from him seven years ago. The letter contained a plea that easily could have been lost in the disturbed writing surrounding it: “I would like to clear my name.” The Innocence Project said that the decision holds several distinctions. Mr. Peacock was the 250th person nationwide to be exonerated by DNA evidence, according to officials. His request for help was the only entreaty for assistance the legal team had ever received from a person who had already completed a sentence and been taken off parole. The case also nearly triples the record for the most time that passed between a prisoner’s release, which occurred on May 13, 1982, and his exoneration, according to the project’s lawyers. “His spirit to never give up in his quest for justice, it’s remarkable, it’s inspirational,” said Peter J. Neufeld, a co-director of the Innocence Project. “Most people would just walk away from it. Most people would just go on. He made it the single-minded objective of his life to clear his name and say ‘I am not a rapist.’ ” Mr. Peacock was arrested in July 1976 when a woman who was attacked and raped outside her Rochester apartment building identified Mr. Peacock, who also lived in the building, as the assailant. After initially denying involvement, Mr. Peacock, who had received diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and had not taken his medication in five months, confessed during a police interrogation that was not recorded. Mr. Peacock was unable to provide any details of the crime, including where, when or how it had occurred, and later recanted his confession. A jury convicted him in six hours. Mr. Peacock appealed the case unsuccessfully six times. He was taken off parole in 1992, against his wishes, after years of refusing to be considered for early release. “When he talks about his case, it feels like he’s talking about something that didn’t happen that long ago,” said Olga Akselrod, who handled the case for the Innocence Project. “He knew he was innocent, and to have the system not believe him was very painful. So he kept fighting.” On Thursday, after the hearing and a short news conference, Mr. Peacock skipped his usual Bible study class to attend a small party his sister had planned so he could celebrate with friends who had heard his proclamations of innocence over the years. “I remember his words,” said the Rev. Juanita Sheffield, 58, a childhood friend and the pastor of God’s Holy Temple in Rochester, where Mr. Peacock attends church. He said, she recalled: “I just want my name cleared, even though I served my time and they let me go. I just want my name cleared.”


SUMMARY:
this article is talking about a case that hit really close to home for me. The case is a rape case that had a man who lived in Rochester, NY arrested. However after many years and many failed appeals he was found non-guilty of this crime by DNA evidence. This article was interesting because it showed that even after 28 years a case can be overturned do to DNA evidence.

New DNA Method Makes It Easier to Trace Criminals

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091029155956.htm

DNA samples are often used to convict criminals. However, many of today's forensics tests are polluted so they cannot be used. Researchers are working together at the Lund University in Sweden in order to improve a critical piece in this analysis process. Some of the findings indicate that the new DNA method strengthens DNA analysis so that previously negative samples can now yield positive and usable DNA profiles. As genetic information grows increasingly more common within forensic analysis, the analysis flow starts with taking a sample with a swab from a drinking glass or blood spot. The cells from the swab are then dissolved in water, and the DNA is extracted. The next step is the copying step. This step finds the best chemical environment and replaces a key enzyme with a DNA polymerase. This yields a clearer genetic footprint, or DNA profile, to use. Also, new mathematical models that makes it easy to interpret that DNA analysis are being devises. If the copying phase is improved, stronger DNA evidence can be shown from the crime scenes, which is very important since this can ultimately link a person to a crime scene with greater certainty.

Rapid DNA Sequencing Can Help Doctors Track Cancer Treatment

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered a new way to track a patient's progress with their cancer treatment using a method of rapidly analyzing and decoding large amounts of DNA. They have also discovered that people don't have just one strain of mitochondrial DNA, but several variations that occur in small quantities as well. These discoveries have had a large impact of the scientific community, as they have mad DNA analysis faster as well as rewriting a widely accepted fact about mitochondrial DNA. These discoveries were made by colleagues of Dr. Bert Vogelstein, who is heading a project to try and unlock more secrets of human DNA and other such things. Essentially how the technique works is by analyzing blood for repeating strains of DNA, which (if they repeat a growing number of times) are easily visible markers for cancer cells, and allow doctors to have a better idea of the progress of the cancer treatment a patient is receiving. Dr. Vogelstein's study also showed that there are multiple variations of mitochondrial DNA in roughly 80% of all cancer subjects. But while these progresses are awe-inspiring and astounding, the team working on them will be unable to continue unless the price of DNA typing drops. Otherwise, a full clinical study would simply be too expensive to be carried out effectively.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/science/09gene.html?ref=science

New Sensors for Chemical agents and Drugs

Scientists at Queen's University Belfast are developing new sensors that will detect chemical agents and illegal drugs which will provide aid against the terrorist smugglers and attacks. The new devices will use special gel pads to ”swipe” an individual or crime scene to gather a sample which is then analyzed by a scanning instrument that can detect the chemicals within seconds.

This will allow better, faster decisions to be made in response to terrorist threats.
The scanning instrument will use Raman Spectroscopy which involves shining a laser beam onto the suspected sample and measuring the energy of light that scatters from it to determine what chemical compound is present. It is so sophisticated it can measure particles of a miniscule scale making detection faster and more accurate.
Normally this type of spectroscopy is not sensitive enough to detect low concentrations of chemicals, so here the sample is mixed with nanoscale silver particles which amplify the signals of compounds allowing even the smallest trace to be detected.
Dr Steven Bell from Queen's University Belfast who is leading the research said:
"Although we are still in the middle of the project we have finished much of the preliminary work and are now at the exciting stage where we put the various strands together to produce the integrated sensor device. For the future, we hope to be able to capitalise on this research and expand the range of chemicals and drugs which these sensors are able to detect."
It is hoped the new sensors will also be the basis for developing 'breathalyzer' instruments that could be of particular use for roadside drugs testing in much the same way as the police take breathalyzer samples to detect alcohol.
At present, police officers are only able to use a Field Impairment Test to determine if a person is driving under the influence of drugs. The accuracy of this method has been questioned because of concerns that it is easy to cheat.
To ensure the technology is relevant, senior staff members from FSNI (Forensic Science Northern Ireland) will give significant input into the operational aspects of the technology and give feedback as to how it might be used in practice by the wider user community.
Stan Brown, Chief Executive of FSNI said:
"We consider the work being carried out by researchers at Queen's University extremely important and potentially very useful in driving forward the effectiveness, efficiency and speed of forensic science practice. The combination of leading edge research and hands-on experience of FSNI's practitioners has already proven very fruitful and is likely to lead to significant developments in forensic methodologies across a range of specialisms."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091005102708.htm