November 18, 2000|By Johnathon E. Briggs | Johnathon E. Briggs,SUN STAFF
To help process a backlog of 10,000 DNA samples, the Maryland State Police lab will begin sending the evidence to private forensic labs so that the data can be added to an FBI database designed to solve crimes nationwide, lab officials said yesterday.
The new National DNA Index System, still growing as states add DNA evidence from crime scenes, helped Anne Arundel County police crack a 1989 sexual assault case this week by leading them to a 44-year-old Chicago man registered as a sex offender in Illinois.
Authorities were able to match a semen sample taken from the crime scene in Linthicum with the DNA of a man arrested this week.
This was the first unsolved case in Maryland in which police were able to link a previously unidentified suspect with DNA found at a crime scene. Forensic experts said the "cold hit" highlighted the crime-solving potential of the national database, which has given detectives the ability to turn evidence into a name.
Officials expect to begin using private labs by July to reduce the backlog in processing samples in Maryland. One reason for the backlog, they said, is a 1999 state law that requires all violent offenders to submit DNA samples for analysis by the state police lab, overwhelming the system.
The FBI database set new standards for generating DNA profiles, requiring different equipment and training, and Maryland's lab, like others around the nation, has been slow to keep pace. "We haven't entered anything [into the national database] for a year and a half," said Louis Portis, director of the state police lab. "We're collecting very well, but we're not analyzing or entering."
Maryland's computerized DNA database was created in 1994 by legislation that required convicted sex offenders to submit blood samples for DNA testing by the state police. This was the first step toward creating a highly sophisticated tool that would eventually help law enforcement officials. Five years later, a state law required all violent offenders to submit DNA samples. That, said Portis, created a massive backlog.
"We had about 4,000 DNA samples almost wrapped up, and then in 1999, we ended up with a 10,000-sample backlog because half the prison population qualified" under the law. With the new requirements, the lab received two new employees, one to collect the DNA samples and one to enter profiles into the state database, he said.
The backlog is a funding and a personnel issue, said Jeff Cover, a civilian supervisor of the Anne Arundel crime scene unit.
He said, "They pass laws to create a database, but you need people to do the sampling." He said many forensic labs have troubling finding scientists with the experience to do DNA sampling. As a result, "you end up with a freezer full of blood with no one to do the sampling. There has to be follow-up to the law," he said.
The Justice Department distributed $14.4 million to 21 states this year to help clear backlogs, but Maryland was not among them. A bill passed last month by the House would budget $170 million more.
DNA samples are collected in the wake of a crime: a spot of saliva from a ski mask, dried semen from a bedspread, a hair root clutched in a victim's hand.
The samples are sent to a forensic DNA lab where sophisticated machines isolate and amplify the DNA. Lab technicians then create a genetic profile by examining the coding on tiny stretches of DNA. Scientists say these strands are remarkably accurate identifications. If three of the mini-strands match a suspect's sample, the likelihood is 2,000 to 1 that police have the right person. Nine matches boost the odds to 1 billion to 1. FBI sampling rules require no fewer than 13 matches, or sites, on the DNA chromosome.
This new method is different from a previous method which relied on seven to eight sites to create a profile. It also requires less evidence to be collected at crime scenes, scientists say.
Portis said the state lab has been trying to convert its equipment and retrain its staff.
When the FBI brought the national database online in October 1998, only eight states, including Virginia, had the required technology to take part. That number has since grown to 30 states, including Maryland and the District of Columbia. Fourteen additional states have databases but are not yet ready for the national index, said FBI spokesman Paul E. Bresson.
Maryland linked to the national system in 1999 and has provided 1,200 samples to the database. The national index now contains 370,000 profiles of convicted offenders and 18,000 profiles of crime scenes, said Bresson.
Since the individual states established their own DNA systems in the early 1990s, he said, the technology has been responsible for linking more than 460 individual crime scenes to another crime and more than 530 offenders to crime scenes, he said, according to August 2000 statistics.
"I think, really, DNA technology has revolutionized forensic science in the last 15 years, and the creation of the national DNA database allows it to reach its full potential," Portis said.
But he said that potential is stifled by the immense number of samples that are flooding labs.
"It sounds good on paper," he said. "But it's been tough implementing it."
Sun staff writer Lisa Goldberg contributed to this article.
