Recently, New York City’s Mayor and Police Commissioner made a big push
for wider use of DNA analysis in law enforcement. In a proposed new policy,
anyone who gets arrested – from red-light runners and turnstile jumpers to
rapists, robbers and killers – would have a DNA sample taken. A huge data
DNA bank like the state and national fingerprint data banks could then solve
crimes by computer matching of crime scene evidence and DNA from previous
offenders.

To understand this proposal and what might be involved in implementing it, I
turned to Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, an internationally renowned forensic
scientist. He is Associate Provost at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and
a member of the doctoral faculty in biochemistry at the graduate center of the
City University of New York. He also served as a consultant to CBS News,
where he commented on the issues regarding blood during the O.J. Simpson
trial.

Now, Kobilinsky regularly supports other major cases as a consultant to the
U.S. Department of Justice and other organizations. He has published
extensively on the subject on DNA analysis and has made many
presentations at meetings around the world. In recent years, he has become a
super crime expert who appears on TV regularly and jets around the world,
advising foreign police agencies on science, labs, and more humane
techniques of policing.

When I first met Larry, I was as green as Kermit the Frog. I was a novelist with
a contract to write three suspense novels featuring cops and bad guys,
wounds and weapons. I had no idea what forensic research was all about.
Larry was the forensic science professor who ran the DNA lab at John Jay
College, and I appealed to him for help. Back in 1992, DNA analysis was a
new development – a tool not considered totally reliable and certainly not
approved by every state as admissible physical evidence in court. Larry took
me into his lab and showed me how DNA typing was done. Since then, he
has been a great resource for me.

Over salads at the fabulous new Atlas Restaurant on Central Park South while
the daffodils were popping in the park, I asked Larry why DNA was so
important and what some of the implications of a DNA databank would be.

LG: What makes DNA so much better than fingerprinting? Fingerprinting is
very easy to do and can be transmitted to national – and even international
data banks – virtually instantaneously.

LK: With fingerprints, the analysis is of minutia, ridges or peculiarities that are
individual points of identification. In order to make a comparison, you need a
certain number of markers. The criteria may be six or eight.

With DNA, it's not six or eight or thirteen markers that are comparable. You're
matching a whole picture, it's everything. It's beyond question. Another
difference, of course, is with fingerprints you need to have the fingerprints at
the scene. With DNA, you can get your evidence from many sources – saliva
from apple core or a drop of blood left at the crime scene, semen, sweat. even
oil from the skin. It's much easier to obtain than fingerprints.

LG: Here's an example I read about in the paper this morning. A man had
been committing rapes in the city, but there was no evidence to arrest a
suspect. In a break-in and attempted rape of a twelve-year-old girl, the father
stabbed the girl's attacker. A DNA sample was taken from blood on the knife,
and that linked him to DNA taken from the other rapes. This guy is going away
forever.

In England, Scotland Yard is now doing this kind of DNA typing for all
criminals. Mayor Guiliani has said he would support taking DNA samples at
birth. Some people think that the huge data bank that would result might be
the answer to crime. What actually is involved in doing DNA sampling?

LK: It's a complicated process. First there is documentation. A sample has to
be taken. In the past that meant, transporting the person to a medical office in
order to have the extraction done by a licensed phlebotomist. But that part
has changed. Cheek cells work just as well and the sample can be taken
anywhere with a mouth swab. After the sample is taken, it has to go to a
special lab. In New York City , it is the Medical Examiner's Office. There, the
sample is purified to isolate the DNA. The first two steps could take a day or
two. Then there is chemical processing.

LG: What does that involve?

(I was eating a great salad at this point and the following is what my notes
read. Did I understand it? Could I pass the course? Not a chance.)

LK: PCR amplification, polymerase chain reaction. Then detection, either gel
or capillary electrophoresis. Then, observation is necessary to generate a
profile.

LG: I got it. In short, there are a number of what I'll call wet steps that have to
be done before you can get to the nice dry computer printout part, is that
right?

LK: Yes, and these chemical processes have to completed by well-trained
experts. The next step is digitalizing the profile so that it can be transmitted.
Then after the profile is digitized, it has to be scrambled.

LG: Why scramble after all that trouble?

LK: Because, as I said, DNA shows everything, a person's whole genetic
background. DNA is used medically for much more than identification. It
shows a person's potential foes, netic diseases. So, in the case of law
enforcement, it's much more information than the government needs. And let's
put it this way, a DNA profile can show a lot about personality, too, and
possibly even predict the potential for violent, antisocial behaviors.
It's possible DNA could also be used, or abused, as a predictor of behavior.
So, if the information were readily available, it could have wide-reaching
negative implications like the potential of punishing people for things they
haven't done but might do some time in the future.

LG: Of course, this is what civil libertarians are worried about.

LK: Yes, only the part of the profile that can be used for identification can be
saved and put in the databanks. The NDIS is the national repository for
genetic profiles obtained from state labs. New York State will have a reporting
lab like other states and will input genetic profiles into NDIS. At the moment,
there is a backlog of some 400,000 DNA cases across the country that have
yet to be processed. These are crime scene samples from major felonies, not
petty crimes.

LG: Why is there such a huge backlog?

LK: In New York, the backlog of major cases – among them, assault, rape,
and homicide – is now over 12,000. With huge caseload like that, it can take
months to get the DNA done. In a really rush case, it used to take up to a
week or two. But now, we have new technology that's much faster. The
chemical processing can be done in twenty-four hours.

LG: Why is it taking so long? What are the issues surrounding DNA that
haven't been resolved?

LK: It's money and labs. At the moment, people in labs are working around
the clock. They don't have lives. There isn't enough equipment. The supplies
are expensive. There's a very small trained work force for this, and for the most
part, forensic labs are not doing the work. That means private labs have to be
built, and the question is space and cost. It's definitely better to have an
assembly line where people specialize in one part of the process, instead of
one person doing it all, from chemistry to computer. In New York City, for
example, the ME's office is expanding its capacity, but it still can't keep up.

The afternoon was passing, and Larry had a TV appearance scheduled. We
had to
say goodbye.

LG: Larry, I think I've got it. To sum up, what you're saying is that DNA has
come a long way in terms of being accepted as a forensic tool – and what we
haven't talked about is that DNA can clear suspects as well as actually freeing
people convicted of crimes they didn't commit – but there isn't the
infrastructure to process the cases on the books at the moment. So
expanding beyond that is not yet practical.

LK: Yes, just to have major cases processed quickly and efficiently would be
a huge step forward at this point. The question of taking swabs of everyone
would raise the question of how long you would keep them and how cost
effective it would be to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to create the labs
to process the DNA of everyone who got stopped for every infraction.

It's mindboggling to think of that. Who hasn't gotten a ticket for speeding?
We'd all be in the databank and it would cost hundreds of dollars each to put
us there. In Great Britain, what they're turning up are petty criminals, not
killers. The question is if we committed the resources, would it pay off? How
many violent dangerous offenders would it turn up? How cost effective would it
be?

I thanked him for the insights, and we said good bye. Outside the sun was
shining, and the daffodils were nodding. That day, two people I know received
summons for minor traffic violations. Both were horrified at even the whisper of
a possibility of appropriated cheek cells...

http://www.aprilwoo.com/dna_testing.html

CNN.com: Police Search
Condit Apartment

Wednesday, Jul. 11, 2001
The April 30
disappearance of Chandra
Levy, the Washington
intern who was about to
leave D.C., has become a
media obsession.
Representative Gary
Condit, the California
Congressman who supposedly had an affair with Levy, agreed to cooperate with
DC police this week by taking a lie detector test and letting them search his
apartment in the capitol.

Lawrence Kobilinsky is the Associate Provost of the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in New York City and a forensics expert. He explained the
nitty-gritty of the investigative techniques that police are using in the Condit
case.

TIME.com: Gary Condit agreed this week to take a lie detector test about his
involvement in Chandra Levy's disappearance. How can any information coming
out of that test be used?

Lawrence Kobilinsky: The low down on polygraphy is the following. It's not
permissible in court. In a hearing in 1923 it was found to be unreliable, and
although technology has improved and polygraphy is quite effective, it is still
considered unreliable. There are reports of false positives rather than false
negatives, which could make an innocent person look guilty. The fact of the
matter is that all law enforcement uses polygraphs. In my opinion, if it is
performed by a person who is highly trained and expert, it is very informative
tool. But though it should be used for investigative purposes, it should not be
used in the courtroom. It is a good, useful technology but it's not perfect.

How does the polygraph test work?

The instrument measures different kinds of physiological parameters, for
example, perspiration and respiration, your rate of breathing. One of the big
problems here is that it's possible to get what looks like a lie that's really the
physiology of the person, responding to the situation.

How can someone fool the test?

There are people that can control their physiological functions — perhaps by
thinking of other things while being questioned, so you wouldn't necessarily
increase your respiration. The point is that it would be useful for Condit to use
this to clear himself, but I can certainly understand why, if somebody is innocent,
they'd be reluctant to put themselves in a situation where there might be a false
positive.

What about the police search of Condit's DC apartment Tuesday night? It's
been ten weeks since Levy disappeared — what could police hope to find in his
apartment?

When you go into this apartment and you're very suspicious that something could
have happened months earlier, you don't know the history or what went on in the
apartment. If there was any biological evidence it could have been cleaned up.

It's been established that she's been in the apartment, so finding her hair
wouldn't be a surprise. But if you find multiple hairs with roots attached, that
could indicate that it was pulled out forcefully. Or there could be microscopic
blood spatter — these are things that are invisible to the naked eye but can be
seen with (available technology), and that would be very suspicious.

How do they show the blood stains?

We're talking about a very intense light force that can vary in its wavelength. So
you can chemically excite the chemicals or molecules within fingerprints or
blood, and that excitement makes the specimen glow — it becomes visible to the
naked eye. Then you'd have to remove whatever you're looking at and bring it
back to the lab.

Spatter might indicate that it was created by a forceful traumatic event. The
spatter pattern can reveal a lot about what created it. But the bottom line is
they're going in to a scene that hasn't even been established as a crime scene.
They have to collect evidence so that later, if they need to, they can go back and
make sense of it.

So they are collecting anything they can as a precautionary measure?

Remember Jon Benet Ramsey — at first the police treated it as a kidnapping
and didn't take proper steps at the home, preserving evidence? I think you have
to get in there — keep an open mind and get in as soon as possible so evidence
isn't lost.

Since he had a relationship with her it makes perfect sense to do what they're
doing. There still may be evidence present if something happened in the
apartment. But remember, she's been there — if you find something of hers, so
what! It doesn't mean anything. If there's a hair, maybe they just didn't vacuum
well. It really depends on whether her biological specimen is there and they're
able to glean some information from a thorough analysis.

God forbid if she's dead and they find evidence on her body that creates an
association with Condit, then he's got to explain that. Even that is not absolute
proof, but it's suspicious. Part of forensic science is interpreting the evidence,
and you can interpret in different ways. Not only do you have to reconstruct the
events leading up to the crime, but after you do the analysis you've got to
interpret it.

Is Condit being treated as a murder suspect, though there is no murder
investigation at this point, and the police insist that he isn't a suspect?

I think there's no question that Condit is a suspect. They don't want to say that
he's a suspect because at this point there's no crime. She may have committed
suicide, she may have been abducted, she may have left the country. She may
not want to be found, though I think that's extremely unlikely. Someone can be
convicted of murder without a body, but there's no evidence of a crime yet.
They have to be careful calling him a suspect. He's the center of attention,
basically.

When an innocent person is caught up in the criminal justice system it's very
hard to exonerate yourself. You have to keep you fingers crossed that the
system is good enough to prove innocence.

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:L8mcAvv4AaYC:www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,167176,00.html+Kobilinsky&hl=en&ie=UTF-8