Dispatch from Dallas: The growing impact of ultra-sensitive DNA testing

Posted: July 10, 2008 12:51 pm

By Cassie Johnson, Forensic Supervisor at Orchid Cellmark, DNA Laboratory


DNA testing is the most powerful type of identity testing available, and it is used for many different purposes: to establish paternity and lineage, or in criminal investigations. With DNA testing, we can uniquely identify every person in the world, unless that person has an identical twin.

Thanks to major improvements in DNA testing technology over the last few years, the tiniest shred of biological evidence can assist in almost any type of crime. Most of the criminal cases we’ve traditionally worked on have been homicides and sexual assaults, but DNA testing is now being used around the world in nonviolent crimes such as burglaries. We could test a pinpoint of biological evidence, whether it’s blood, semen, saliva, or skin cells, and develop a DNA profile. The potential sources of DNA are almost limitless. As DNA testing has progressed, it has become substantially more sensitive, and it works increasingly well on compromised or degraded samples. We’re now able to generate a DNA profile from a sample in which testing would previously never have been attempted.

The criminal justice system uses four main types of DNA testing: STR, Y-STR, mini-STR, and mitochondrial:

• STR testing has been around the longest and is the type of testing most commonly used by crime labs, defense attorneys and prosecutors.

• Mitochondrial DNA testing is often used to generate a DNA profile from hair, bones, or teeth, and is a specialized type of testing that has been used since the mid-1990s.

• The Y-STR test uses the same technologies and principles as STR testing. However, Y-STR testing only looks at areas that are on the Y chromosome, which makes it male-specific. In our experience, it is also more sensitive than STR testing, so we may be able to obtain a profile with less starting material.

• Mini-STR is the newest form of DNA testing and is especially useful on samples that are highly degraded. It is perhaps even more sensitive than STR or Y-STR testing. This year, Rickey Johnson became the first person to be proven innocent through mini-STR DNA testing.

In every case, our job is to develop profiles from evidence regardless of the eventual outcome. We have conducted testing in the cases of several Innocence Project clients, and these are cases that truly demonstrate the potential of DNA testing to change people’s lives. In James Waller’s case, a state lab attempted to conduct DNA testing several years earlier and couldn’t get a result—but the process of testing used up the evidence, which is not uncommon.

We didn’t have any of the original evidence like the rape kit or the bedsheet to go back and test. The only thing that was left over for testing was a liquid “extract,” meaning a leftover lab sample of the evidence. Fortunately, the state lab preserved the liquid extract and made it available to us for Y-STR testing. We were able to obtain a DNA profile from the extract; it did not match his profile and therefore showed that he could not have contributed the sample. Something similar happened in Scott Fappiano’s case. In that instance, it was Orchid Cellmark that had retained the extracts from the early 1990s. Those extracts ultimately led to Mr. Fappiano’s freedom.

Orchid Cellmark is very proud to be able to donate its expertise in DNA testing to the Innocence Project, which continuously fights for those who have been wrongfully convicted. Working on these post-conviction cases reminds us how powerful DNA testing can be, whether it be in solving a cold case or exonerating the wrongfully accused.

 

Orchid Cellmark, based in New Jersey with laboratories all over the country – including Johnson’s lab in Dallas, has conducted DNA testing in Innocence Project cases for years and provides some testing pro bono. Their laboratories have conducted testing that exonerated several Innocence Project clients in recent years. In many of these cases, Orchid Cellmark’s testing has also helped identify the true perpetrators of crimes for which innocent people were convicted.

Innocence Events Around the Country

Posted: November 6, 2008 3:10 pm

Tonight at Baruch College in New York City, Scott Fappiano will tell students and members of the public about the 21 years he spent in New York prison before DNA testing obtained by the Innocence Project proved his innocence. He will be joined by Barry Gibbs, another Innocence Project client freed after evidence of his innocence was uncovered. The event is in Manhattan at 6:30 p.m. RSVP here to attend.

Last night, students at the University of Texas at Dallas heard from North Carolina exoneree Darryl Hunt about his two decades in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. The documentary film about his ordeal, “The Trials of Darryl Hunt,” was also screened at the event. Read more about Hunt’s case here.

And this weekend in upstate New York, exonerees Roy Brown, Alan Newton and Dennis Maher will speak at the “Art of Innocence” speaker series about their cases, along with attorneys and other leaders in the field. Learn more about attending “The Art of Innocence” here.

Organizer Lawrence Golden wrote a column yesterday about the event in the Utica Observer-Dispatch.

Imagine the horror of being wrongly accused of rape or murder, being arrested and tried and found guilty. Imagine the devastation of being sentenced to life in prison or death by lethal injection when you had absolutely nothing to do with the crime involved. Literally hundreds — perhaps thousands — of individuals are experiencing just that in this country today.

Read his full column. (Utica Post-Dispatch, 11/05/08)

Scott Fappiano's New Life

Posted: October 8, 2009



Three years ago this week - October 6, 2006 - Innocence Project client Scott Fappiano was exonerated after having served 21 years in prison for a Brookyn, NY, rape he didn't commit.

Since his release, Fappiano has built a new life. On October 18, he will be married to his fiancee Joanne, his girlfriend before he went to prison. He is planning to enroll next year in school to become a funeral director.
 
His ordeal began in 1983. An armed male broke into the Brooklyn home of an NYPD officer and his wife. The perpetrator instructed the woman to tie up her husband in the bed with a length of telephone wire, and he proceeded to rape her. The victim was taken to the hospital, where a rape kit was collected. Swabs from the kit tested positive for the presence of sperm, as did a pair of jogging pants worn by the victim after the attack.

The woman described her attacker to police as a white male of Italian descent, and was shown a series of photographs of individuals. She pointed to Fappiano as the attacker, and then chose him again in a live line-up in which several police officers stood in as "fillers." That same day her husband, the police officer, viewed a live line-up, too.  He chose one of the fillers.
 
Fappiano was tried twice for this crime. Serology tests before trial showed the blood from a stained towel and a cigarette butt matched the victim's husband. Other tests were inconclusive. After the jury could not reach a verdict in his 1984 trial, he was tried again in 1985. He was convicted of rape, sodomy, burglary and sexual abuse and the court sentenced him to 20-50 years in prison.

The Innocence Project began representing Fappiano in 2003, but it took two years for the evidence from the case to turn up - including the jogging pants worn by the victim during the crime that could not be tested previously. DNA testing showed that while the sweatpants contained DNA that matched the woman's, the male DNA found did not match Fappiano's - nor did it match the victim's husband. 

Fappiano is one of 13 New York exonerees whose wrongful convictions were caused in part by eyewitness misidentification. His case and others have led to a push for reforms to the way lineup procedures are conducted. Learn more about progress of these reforms in the recent Innocence Project report: "Reevaluating Lineups: Why Witnesses Make Mistakes and How to Reduce the Chance of a Misidentification."

Other Exoneration Anniversaries this Week:

Leonard Callace, New York (Served 5.5 years, Exonerated 10/5/92)

Brian Piszczeck, Ohio (Served 3 years, Exonerated 1994)

Douglas Echols, Georgia (Served 5 years, Exonerated 2002)

Samuel Scott, Georgia (Served 15 years, Exonerated 2002)

Kevin Byrd, Texas (Served 12 years, Exonerated 1997)

William Harris, West Virginia (Served 7 years, Exonerated 1995)

Calvin Washington, Texas (Served 13 years, Exonerated 2001)

Tags: Scott Fappiano

 

After 21 Years in Prison, Four Free

Posted: October 13, 2010 2:49 pm

The victim described her attacker as a white male of Italian descent and selected Fappiano’s photograph out of a lineup at the police station.  Her husband, presented with a live line-up, picked out a police “filler,”  not Fappiano.

Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause in wrongful convictions nationwide, factoring into more than 75% of convictions later overturned through DNA testing.  In case after case, DNA evidence proves that eyewitness identification is often inaccurate.  In Fappiano’s case, 21 years would pass before he and the Innocence Project obtained access to the DNA tests that would prove what Fappiano  already knew – that he was innocent. 

After the Innocence Project accepted Fappiano’s case in 2003, it took two years to locate key evidence that could be tested. During the summer of 2006, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed several rounds of testing and found that there was DNA from one female and one male in the sample. The female contributor was the victim. The male portion matched neither the victim’s husband nor Fappiano, proving his innocence. 

There is no law in New York State that requires the preservation of evidence http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Preservation_Of_Evidence.php, and without those vials of DNA, Fappiano might still be in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. 

After his official exoneration on October 6, 2006, Scott Fappiano campaigned alongside fellow exonerees in support of the creation of an innocence commission in New York.  In 2009, New York’s highest Judge, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, created the Justice Task Force, a commission devoted to implementing and monitoring reforms in the court and justice systems.  New York is one of only nine states nationwide that has established a criminal justice reform commission.

Read more about these commissions, their goals and legislation.


Other Exoneration Anniversaries this week:

Leonard Callace, New York (Served 5.5 years, Exonerated 10/5/92)

Brian Piszczeck, Ohio (Served 3 years, Exonerated 1994)

Douglas Echols, Georgia (Served 5 years, Exonerated 10/7/02)

Samuel Scott, Georgia (Served 15 years, Exonerated 10/7/02)

Kevin Byrd, Texas (Served 12 years, Exonerated 1997)

William Harris, West Virginia (Served 7 years, Exonerated 10/10/95)

Calvin Washington, Texas (Served 13 years, Exonerated 10/10/01)

NYPD and Innocence Project Awarded Federal Funds to Identify Wrongful Convictions

Posted: September 25, 2012 4:15 pm

The New York City Police Department, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the Innocence Project have been awarded a National Institute of Justice grant totaling $1.25 million to catalogue crime scene evidence so that those seeking to prove their innocence through DNA testing can more readily get access to evidence in their case. According to a study of cases closed by the Innocence Project from 1996 to 2006, 50% of New York City cases were closed due to lost or destroyed evidence. Nationally, the figure from the same study was 22% of cases closed.
 
The funds are awarded through the National Institute of Justice’s Kirk Bloodsworth’s Postconviction DNA Testing Assistance Program, which was established in 2004 by the Justice for All Act and will be distributed over two years beginning on October 1, 2012. Bloodsworth was the first American who received the death penalty to be freed by DNA evidence.
 
The inability to locate evidence has hampered the Innocence Project’s efforts to clear people convicted in New York City for years, reported The New York Times.

Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, said that his organization had sought evidence — typically semen samples or blood stains — from the Police Department “in a couple of dozen” old cases only to learn that the police “simply couldn’t find” the evidence in its warehouses.