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Dangerous Delay on DNA State struggles to gather genetic profiles of violent felons Charlie Goodyear, Erin Hallissy, Chronicle Staff Writers |
Tuesday, October 19, 1999
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First of two parts.
DNA fingerprinting -- the greatest breakthrough in modern crime fighting -- is widely unused in California because the state has botched its system to catalog genetic profiles of rapists, murderers and other violent felons. Tens of thousands of blood and saliva samples sit in refrigerators at a Department of Justice lab in Berkeley, where officials struggle to build a DNA database capable of tracking and catching the state's worst criminals. But criminalists have profiled only 65,000 of the 120,500 samples forwarded from prisons and county jails. Even more disturbing is the fact that the state has released thousands of violent prisoners without collecting their genetic samples, as required by state law. No one knows for sure how many DNA samples are ``owed'' to the state, but the number could be as high as 200,000. ``This is horrible. I think it's a real travesty,'' said prosecutor Mike Jacobs, a DNA authority in Orange County. ``We've been playing with this thing and we haven't gotten it right. What it's doing is it's preventing us from solving rapes and rape-murders.'' The tremendous potential of the database was demonstrated on Sept. 1, 1994, when it scored California's first ``cold hit'' -- a computer match of a known sex offender to the brutal rape and murder of a 76-year-old Richmond woman that police had struggled to solve for two years. But since that initial success, only 10 other cold hits have been recorded in California, while some smaller states have logged dozens with their databases. What Jacobs and his colleagues want is exactly what California officials promised when they established procedures in 1989 to create DNA ``fingerprints'' from blood and saliva samples of sex offenders and violent felons. The kidnap and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993 prompted lawmakers to expand the number of crimes requiring DNA samples from offenders, in an effort to track more dangerous felons who are considered highly likely to commit future crimes. The database cannot identify a first-time criminal, but it can lead to the arrest of serial rapists or murderers before they claim more victims. It also may deter criminals who know they can be genetically tracked. Crimes now requiring an offender to give a DNA sample include rape, murder, attempted murder, voluntary manslaughter, felony spousal abuse, kidnapping, child molestation, mayhem and torture. But bureacratic breakdowns and a lack of urgency have hobbled the state's efforts to build a complete DNA database. Jails and prisons have been unwilling or unable to collect genetic samples from prisoners. And the lab assembling the database is underfunded and has suffered from high employee turnover as well as changes in the way genetic samples are analyzed. The failure has kept criminals on the street, the wrongfully convicted behind bars and potentially solvable crimes in the cold-case files. Police work is often a matter of timing, chance and following through on threadbare leads. Savvy criminals -- especially serial rapists or killers -- know how to destroy evidence or avoid leaving it. Improved DNA technology means law enforcement can foil these attempts. Just by licking a stamp or smoking a cigarette, a criminal can leave DNA evidence at a crime scene that is the genetic equivalent of a calling card. Advanced testing techniques mean scientists can detect traces of blood even after a suspect has washed it away from clothing. Even a criminal's sweat can betray him. ``We have the capability and technology to get evidence from the crime scene within 24 or 48 hours of a crime, create a DNA profile of the evidence, search a database ... and give the police the name of the perpetrator within 48 hours of the crime,'' said Paul Ferrara, who heads the state of Virginia's lab. But that type of whirlwind crime fighting almost never happens in California. State officials acknowledge problems with their system and say they hope to be fully caught up in the next two years -- a wildly ambitious estimate, according to critics. Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Rock Harmon, who participated in the O.J. Simpson case, has cast the incomplete database in sobering human terms. He gathered the names of 700 convicted murderers from Alameda County and ran them through the state's computer. He found just 300. `'And if it's those hundreds in Alameda County, then it has to be thousands statewide,'' Harmon said. -- -- -- When her great-nephew checked on 76-year-old Leathia Taylor early on Sept. 28, 1992, she was snoring peacefully in her Richmond apartment. When he returned that night, he found her strangled to death with her own pantyhose still wrapped around her neck, dressed only in a white bra and blue bathrobe. She had been sodomized. Overworked homicide detectives dealing with surging crime rates in Richmond during the early 1990s were stumped by Taylor's slaying. On April 8, 1994, the case was listed as ``inactive.'' In the meantime, Richmond police sent semen taken from Taylor's body to the state's DNA lab in the off-chance that its nascent database could provide some clues. On Sept. 1, 1994, the computer matched the semen sample to James Edward King, a convicted rapist on parole. King had been required to give a blood sample before he was released from San Quentin State Prison in 1991. Police arrested him for Taylor's murder and took another blood sample, which confirmed the cold hit. King was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1997. ``That case I'm convinced never would have been solved,'' said Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Brian Baker, who prosecuted King. ``He was never identified as a suspect in any way, shape or form. I'm convinced that there are cases out there that could potentially be solved if there was a full, up-and-running database to send evidence to.'' California's second cold hit proved even more dramatically the database's value. In 1996, the state computer linked Gerald Parker, a longtime felon with convictions for kidnapping, rape and assault, to a string of six slayings in Orange County 17 years earlier. Kevin Green, who had spent 16 years in prison insisting he was wrongly convicted of assaulting his wife and causing the death of their unborn daughter, was finally freed because of the indisputable genetic evidence. Green had been denied parole four times because he continued to proclaim his innocence, rather than ``accept responsibility for his crime.'' ``The only thing I had left to give my daughter is the truth, (and) stand up for the fact that she did not die by her father's hand,'' Green, 41, said from his parents' home in Missouri. ``I wasn't going to not be there for her ever again.'' The database could have saved California taxpayers a good bit of cash as well. Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill earlier this month authorizing a payment of $620,000 to Green for his years behind bars. ``You can say I'm appalled,'' said Green, when told of California's backlog, which could have included Parker's blood sample. ``It's alarming.'' At the time of the cold hit, Parker, then in Avenal State Prison in Kings County on a parole violation, was due to be released in a few weeks. ``That just shows the power of what the database would do,'' said Jacobs, the Orange County prosecutor who handled Parker's case. ``Through some miracle, (Parker's blood sample) had been collected and analyzed.'' -- -- -- That Parker's genetic profile had been entered was indeed remarkable, considering the breakdowns in the system that often begin the moment a defendant is convicted. All too often in California, jails and prisons aren't collecting samples from felons required to submit to genetic profiling. In August, the state recorded its highest monthly total of samples since collection began in 1984 from prisons and county jails -- about 3,000. But experts say that number is far smaller than the actual number of convicted criminals required to give genetic samples. For example, Los Angeles County, which is trying to improve its collections, sends the state lab 18 to 20 samples per week, most from sex offenders. ``I know we're not capturing enough samples going out the door,'' said Capt. Charles Jackson, who heads the county's main jail processing center. If the system were perfect, the county would provide about 70 samples per day, Jackson said. San Francisco is also behind in providing samples for the database. After a judge ordered the city's DNA lab to shut down earlier this year because of shoddy DNA analysis, lab authorities are just starting to formulate plans for collecting blood and saliva from convicts. Alameda County, though, has made collection of DNA samples for the database a top priority for several years. Officials are submitting 50 samples a week to the state, getting reimbursed $30 for each sample. ``Our feeling is if they come through the custody of the sheriff's office and they're required to give a DNA sample, we're going to take it,'' said Lt. Brian Masterson of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. Convicts in Alameda County must give a sample when convicted, even if they're going to state prison. About 10 who have been sentenced to life terms have refused, so they remain in Alameda County jails until they agree to let blood be drawn from them. That means they are denied prison privileges such as conjugal visits, education programs and job opportunities. Despite this work, many of the blood samples from Alameda County's sex offenders and violent criminals -- including parolees on the street -- remain untyped and are not in the state database. ``They're getting almost none of them,'' Harmon said. The state Department of Corrections provides 90 percent of the samples to the DNA database, but it too has a serious collection problem. For the first six months of this year, no samples were taken from thousands of inmates because the department didn't have a system in place to deal with the new crimes added to the DNA data-bank law. Case record workers have to comb through files of every prisoner to find out who is required to give samples, because the law is retroactive. About one-third of California's 162,000 prisoners have committed crimes requiring them to give samples for the database. ``It's just a huge workload issue,'' said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections. ``You don't have a firm number on how many you even need.'' About 15,000 convicts already on parole also qualify for the data bank, but they're escaping the law so far because the corrections department says it does not have the money to collect their samples. To make matters worse, California has been unable to provide enough kits used by prisons and jails to collect blood and saliva samples. A company used by the state Department of Justice has been unwilling to make a large number of kits, because the firm is not paid immediately because of the state's billing practice. As a result, the Department of Corrections, along with some counties such as Contra Costa, has experienced a drastic shortage. Karen Sheldon, a top criminalist in Contra Costa County, said her laboratory was unable to get kits from the state for at least a month and had to ask another county to provide some. -- -- -- Two to three mailbags stuffed with samples arrive each day at the state lab -- a low, anonymous gray building close to the rumble of Interstate 80 in Berkeley. There is no marking on the lab's door other than the street address. Visitors have to call in on a phone overlooked by a security camera before gaining entry. Inside a series of immaculate, small rooms, state technicians use powerful machines to perform the genetic sleuthing that separates them from ordinary investigators. Lance Gima, an unpretentious man who has spent his 25-year career as a criminalist for the Department of Justice, became the lab's director in 1995. He's proud of his workers, whose pictures are posted along a long diagram of DNA's double helix in the main hallway. But he admits they have a big job to do. ``There are a lot of samples that should have been collected. There are a lot of samples that we should be getting right now,'' Gima said. ``I can't dispute that.'' Jan Bashinski, head of the state Department of Justice forensics bureau and a member of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence, told her fellow commissioners last year that California is owed at least 36,000 samples from inmates or parolees. Since then, she has admitted that figure is probably a low estimate. No one truly knows how big the problem is. ``I'm sure that number is larger. It's definitely in the tens of thousands,'' Bashinski said. ``It's a lot.'' Forty-six of California's 58 counties rely on the lab, which has a $10 million budget, for testing in criminal cases, most often those with identified suspects and looming trial dates. But 60 percent or more of the lab's resources are devoted to building the database. Still, critics say the work is moving too slowly. Take Orange County, where only 40 percent of the criminals eligible for the DNA database are in the state's computer. ``It's kind of hard to work up much enthusiasm for the database when they're not putting it together,'' said Frank Fitzpatrick, director of Orange County's crime lab. ``We have unsolved cases that have been sent to the state. We know that we're going to get a lot of suspects identified if we had a fully functioning database at the state.'' -- -- -- Despite the widespread failure in California to use DNA fingerprinting to its full potential, few lawmakers are aware of the backlog. State Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, who as an assemblyman authored the 1997 bill that expanded crimes requiring DNA testing, said it takes time to create a complete database. ``It hasn't come to my attention that it's causing any problem,'' he said. ``I'm concerned, but not worried yet.'' U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, was involved in DNA legislation when he was a state senator and hopes to sponsor federal legislation for funding to complete DNA sampling nationwide for criminals. ``We began in a deficit,'' Thompson said of the state's initial efforts to complete its database. But, he said, ``I didn't realize how far in the hole we were.'' California Attorney General Bill Lockyer called the DNA database ``extraordinarily important'' and said he fought to get $10 million in funding over the next two years to deal with the backlog. The lab is under pressure from prosecutors and police to work on pending cases with identified suspects, he noted, and can't always devote as much attention to getting cold hits on unsolved crimes. ``You always want to solve as many crimes as possible,'' Lockyer said. His predecessor, Dan Lungren, said he also campaigned during his tenure as the state's top lawman to boost funding for the Berkeley lab, arguing that California should lead the country in DNA technology. ``When we started and got a couple of hits, we thought this was the beginning,'' said Lungren, now a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. ``We ought to be able to have the same leadership position in DNA as we've had in fingerprinting.'' -- -- -- One challenge to regaining that lead has been a high rate of turnover at the state lab, about 25 percent a year. Department of Justice criminalists frequently leave to take higher-paying jobs at a number of private DNA labs in the Bay Area. ``That kind of drain on our talent makes it almost impossible to catch up with these backlogs,'' Lockyer said. ``We hire somebody and then they're gone too quickly.'' Another problem is California's refusal so far to follow other states that have reduced their DNA database backlogs by contracting with private labs that can process thousands of cases a month. Gima said he has considered clearing up his lab's backlog by hiring private firms, but said, ``I'm worried that if we go only to outsourcing, I haven't set up a really strong foundation for the future here.'' The state is planning to solve the backlog problem on its own through an ambitious program to analyze 100,000 samples per year for the next two years. But some experts are skeptical that California will be able to test that many DNA samples annually. ``Obviously no one has done that volume yet,'' said Steve Niezgoda, who heads the FBI's Combined DNA Index System. To complicate matters further, California must convert more than 40,000 DNA samples in the database to a new format that uses a faster procedure for genetic profiling and is the national standard. Still, Gima remains upbeat, perhaps because he has seen so much change in criminology since he first began working at the Department of Justice in 1974. ``This is an exciting time, I think, for public safety, both on cases new and cold,'' he said. ``It's just the tip of the iceberg. It's exciting because we're all finally on the same page.'' Others, such as Alameda County's Rock Harmon, aren't nearly as optimistic. Harmon, who has probably done more than anyone in California to alert authorities to the database crisis, understands the nearly magical power of the state computer to match a suspect to a crime. But the crime can't be solved, the guilty can't be convicted, the wrongfully imprisoned can't be freed, if the names aren't in the computer, if the blood is never taken, if somebody doesn't heat the cold cases back to life. ``It's like a lottery ticket,'' Harmon said. ``You can't win if you don't keep buying tickets.''
DNA AND THE COLD HITThe second ``cold hit'' using California's DNA database not only solved six rapes and murders from the 1970s, but also exonerated an Orange County man who had been in prison for 16 years for a crime he insisted he did not commit. Gerald Parker, a convicted sex offender, confessed when detectives confronted him with the DNA evidence. -- Exposing the true perpetrator 1980: Gerald Parker convicted for the kidnap-rape of a 13-year-old girl. Spent six years in state prison. 1986-1996: Parker in and out of prison for assault, vandalism and parole violations. 1996: The state's computer links DNA evidence from six Orange County murders committed from November 1978 to October 1979 to Parker, who was in prison. Parker confesses and also admits to the 1979 rape and beating of Dianna Green, whose husband, Kevin Green, had been wrongfully convicted for the attack. 1996: Kevin Green is released from prison after spending 16 years in custody. 1998: Parker is convicted for the Orange County ``Bedroom Basher'' murders. 1999: Parker is sentenced to death by an Orange County Superior Court judge.
HOW A HIT IS MADE1) DNA analysis from crime scenes and DNA profiles of convicted felons are photographed and entered into computer.2) Technician traces genetic markers from video images using special software that converts them into numbers. 3) Converted numerical data are sent electronically to local, state and national Combined DNA Index System databases. 4) Forensic investigator calls up crime scene data and compares them with database files on felons. Matches are identified and displayed graphically. A ``cold hit'' result is shown as closely matched color bars and as marked boxes in data fields Sources: California Department of Justice crime lab, Berkeley; Chronicle research John Blanchard / The Chronicle
GENETIC SLEUTHING SPEEDS UPSince the early 1980s, most DNA analysis in the United States was done using a slow and tedious technique called Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP). Requiring a whole strand of DNA, RFLP samples take weeks to produce results. Newer, faster techniques automate the process and can identify even partial DNA found at crime scenes in one to two days. A process called Short Tandem Repeats (STR) uses tiny fragments of DNA and creates copies of a targeted genetic sequence to identify an individual. STR: FAST-TRACK DNA FINGERPRINTINGINSIDE THE NUCLEUSCells with a nucleus are analyzed. Inside the nuclei are chromosomes \320 coiled strings of genetic material. Cells can be taken from traces of semen, saliva, skin, hair roots and bone. 1) EXTRACTING DNAChemicals are mixed with sample material such as white blood cells to break down cell walls and release DNA strands. 2) SEPARATING AND MARKING DNADNA strands separate at temperatures close to boiling (a). ``Primers'' are then attached to the DNA at the beginning and end of key sequences (b). 3) MAKING COPIESPrimers allow enzymes in the solution to create the other half of the DNA strand, thereby replicating themselves (c). Enzymes help the DNA withstand the high temperatures. In roughly 30 cycles, the process takes two to three hours and creates billions of copies. 4) SORTING FRAGMENTSThe copies of DNA sequences are placed in a gel. A high-voltage current is applied, causing the fragments to line up in bands similar to a supermarket bar code. 5) IMAGINGA picture is made from the gel using fluorescent dyes to mark size, quantity and genetic characteristics of the billions of copies. The results are ready for analysis or scanning into a database.
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