From the Denver Post:
Denver criminal investigators have connected a man to two car thefts through the DNA of a family member, a first in Denver and one of the only cases in the country solved using the controversial technique.
The Denver district attorney's office and Police Department used software that they designed to run DNA from the crime scenes through a DNA database of Denver felony convicts, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said.
The search found a man whose DNA was a close but not exact match to DNA recovered from blood found at an auto burglary. Further investigation identified the man's brother as the suspect, and he later pleaded guilty.
"This is the first case we've actually solved and been able to bring charges using the familial DNA software," Morrissey said. "Our hope is the message will go out that we have this software and we're willing to help people who have difficult cases."
Familial DNA has been used in Great Britain to solve a handful of murders and other crimes, but in the United States it has been slow to catch on because of technological obstacles and ethical concerns.
"Because of the vastly uneven conviction rates in our country based on race and ethnicity, . . . you would be implicating a bunch of innocent people much more likely to be African-American and Hispanic. That should give us some pause," said David Lazer, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard who has written on the issue. "At the individual level, we should be concerned that those individuals who have relatives in the database who have no reason to be under enhanced surveillance based on their past behavior will become de facto a part of the database."
The suspect, Luis Jaimes-Tinajero, 21, pleaded guilty Sept. 10 to one count of criminal trespass for both thefts. He was sentenced to two years' probation and credited for the 54 days he had already served in Denver County Jail.
The case was part of a research project, Morrissey said. Investigators ran unidentified DNA samples from Denver crime scenes through a Denver convict database and found six potential familial matches. Five did not lead to suspects, but the sixth yielded the Jaimes-Tinajero case.
Investigators have run roughly 2,000 DNA samples through the state's database of 80,000 convicts, yielding 13 potential familial matches, including some of the same ones from the city database. They are still investigating those cases, Morrissey said.
Full artical at the Denver Post can be found here.
Denver criminal investigators have connected a man to two car thefts through the DNA of a family member, a first in Denver and one of the only cases in the country solved using the controversial technique.
The Denver district attorney's office and Police Department used software that they designed to run DNA from the crime scenes through a DNA database of Denver felony convicts, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said.
The search found a man whose DNA was a close but not exact match to DNA recovered from blood found at an auto burglary. Further investigation identified the man's brother as the suspect, and he later pleaded guilty.
"This is the first case we've actually solved and been able to bring charges using the familial DNA software," Morrissey said. "Our hope is the message will go out that we have this software and we're willing to help people who have difficult cases."
Familial DNA has been used in Great Britain to solve a handful of murders and other crimes, but in the United States it has been slow to catch on because of technological obstacles and ethical concerns.
"Because of the vastly uneven conviction rates in our country based on race and ethnicity, . . . you would be implicating a bunch of innocent people much more likely to be African-American and Hispanic. That should give us some pause," said David Lazer, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard who has written on the issue. "At the individual level, we should be concerned that those individuals who have relatives in the database who have no reason to be under enhanced surveillance based on their past behavior will become de facto a part of the database."
The suspect, Luis Jaimes-Tinajero, 21, pleaded guilty Sept. 10 to one count of criminal trespass for both thefts. He was sentenced to two years' probation and credited for the 54 days he had already served in Denver County Jail.
The case was part of a research project, Morrissey said. Investigators ran unidentified DNA samples from Denver crime scenes through a Denver convict database and found six potential familial matches. Five did not lead to suspects, but the sixth yielded the Jaimes-Tinajero case.
Investigators have run roughly 2,000 DNA samples through the state's database of 80,000 convicts, yielding 13 potential familial matches, including some of the same ones from the city database. They are still investigating those cases, Morrissey said.
Full artical at the Denver Post can be found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment