ONE LAST CHANCE  Thursday, November 20, 2008

DNA testing has brought television drama to life in Santa Cruz, CA. 36 years ago Peter Mitchell placed a call to the police station two blocks from his home to say he was being murdered. When police arrived Mitchell described his assailant and told them his name just before dying from a stab wound to the heart. An intense investigation began, and while information led police to believe the murderer was a hitchhiker Mitchell picked up, the case went cold with no arrest. George Turegano, the detective who investigated the crime originally, is now 62 and retired but he's back on the case working as a community service officer. He has reopened the case and submitted cigarette butts and other trace evidence in hopes of learning Mitchell's killer.

[Santa Cruz Sentinel]

THE SEARCH IS OVER  Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Peggy Fossett's search for answers to her husband's disappearance in September 2007 ended with a harsh reality. DNA testing confirmed that two bones found near a crash site in California's Sierra Nevada belong to Steve Fossett. They were found along with his wallet and a pair of his tennis shoes.

The recreational aviator had taken off from a friend's Nevada ranch. When he didn't return, a 20,000 square foot search was launched that led nowhere. It wasn't until a hiker went off course in October 2008 that the plane crash, bones and other evidence were discovered.

SUPREME DECISIONS  Thursday, November 6, 2008

DNA testing has helped prove the innocence of numerous convicted felons. In many of these cases, the technology and testing wasn't available when they went to trial. Although an overwhelming majority of states in the union grant convicted felons access to DNA testing on evidence years after a crime was committed, there are still six that do not. The Supreme Court will now decide if it is a constitutional right every state must grant.

The case resulted when an Alaskan man, William Osborne, sued the state for the right to have evidence tested that could overturn his kidnapping, rape and assault convictions. The U.S Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit referred it to the highest law of the land since the lower appeals courts are divided on the constitutionality of requesting evidence testing post-conviction.

[LA Times]

TURNING BACK THE CLOCK  Monday, October 13, 2008

Section 7646 of the California Family Code may get some updating if the state legislature gets its way. An amendment (SB 1333) to the code, that allows fathers to contest a past judgment of paternity if DNA paternity testing shows they are indeed not the biological father, is awaiting approval. The California Alliance for Families and Children (CFAC), a family advocacy group, asserts this is the first step in dealing with paternity fraud.

[California N.O.W.]

CALLING CARD  Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is breaking ground in new ways to collect DNA evidence. Officers started using Trigger ID kits recently to preserve potential DNA evidence from handguns found at the scene of a crime. Before packing the weapon into an evidence bag, police use a pocket-sized kit to swab the pistol grip, barrel and magazine. Law officials are hoping DNA testing from these swabs will lead to more prosecutions in gun-related crimes.

[Indystar.com]

IT'S IN THE GENES  Thursday, October 2, 2008

Preliminary research suggests parents pass on more than just hair and eye color. A recent study published in the medical journal Pediatrics led researchers to speculate 1 in 116 children are born with the herpes virus passed through their maternal or paternal DNA. Caroline Hall, MD and professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Rochester and senior author of the study, says they will continue research to see if the affects of the virus differ for children born with it compared to those who contract it after birth.

[Scientific American]

MATTERS OF THE HEART  Thursday, September 18, 2008

Humanitarian efforts are delicate issues, and the U.S. State Department's suspended East African family-reunification is a prime example. The program, known as Priority Three (P3), was instituted to reunify families from civil war-torn areas with relatives living in the U.S. Complaints of fraud led officials to conduct DNA testing earlier this year in an effort to establish legitimate family ties before allowing refugees entry into the U.S. The results showed only a small fraction, about 20 percent, of individuals were actually blood relations. Critics of the testing, and subsequent suspension of the program, claim family ties are a grey area in the affected countries, including Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, since men and women often raise and take responsibility for orphaned and abandoned children. State Department officials understand critics' concerns but insist they have to set a standard to balance the need of all refugees seeking entry, which totaled more than 45,000 in the last year. Officials hope to resume the program once they reconcile the fraud issues, though there is no set date.

[Wall Street Journal]

FINAL MASTERPIECE  Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Salvador Dali is known as the father of Modern Surrealism in the art world. The question a 56-year-old Spanish woman has, though, is if he's her biological father. Known only as Pilar A., the woman claims Dali had an affair with her mother who spent one summer working as a housekeeper in Catalonia, Spain, where Dali lived. Dali, who died in 1989, and his wife of 45 years, Gala, who died in 1982, had no children together. DNA testing from a "death mask" Dali created proved inconclusive but Pilar is awaiting results from tests performed on medical samples saved before his death.

[Daily Telegraph]

THE WAITING GAME  Thursday, September 11, 2008

DNA test results carry weight that crosses cultural boundaries. In a shocking and victorious move for a Middle Eastern woman, a Higher Shariah Court has mandated the corpse of a Bahraini man be exhumed to perform a DNA paternity test. The children from his first marriage did not know that he remarried until his death in 2006. They have since disputed that the son born during that union is their father's. This is the first case in Bahrain in which a judge has ordered a body to be exhumed. Positive test results mean the woman and child must be officially recognized as members of the dead man's family.

[arabianbusiness.com]

WHEELS OF CHANGE  Thursday, September 4, 2008

Current state law in Mississippi allows DNA test results to be used in both prosecutions and to free those wrongly convicted. Yet, there are no regulations making it mandatory to preserve biological evidence to perform testing. State legislators know the value of DNA testing and are taking steps to make it more readily available in criminal cases by setting up a task force. The group of leaders and lawmakers formed to put the wheels of change in motion met for the first time on August 11^th of this year.

[WAPT - Jackson]