Forensic Advancements Are Abundant, Utah Expert Says

Jan 31, 08:54 AM

OREM -- Thanks to DNA testing, one small piece of human flesh plucked off weathered bones found in the mountains allowed criminalists to solve a years-old missing person case.

This is the real CSI, explained Jay Henry, deputy director of the Utah Bureau of Forensic Science. Except his office doesn't solve two cases an hour, minus commercial time.

"(We're) actually making a difference on a lot of cases," he said. "Those are the funnest cases. When nobody knows the answer and you figure it out -- that's kind of a neat thing to be able to do."

Henry spoke Tuesday night to more than 60 people at the Orem Library as part of the library's lecture series, Research Revolution: Science and the Shaping of Modern Life, which runs every Tuesday and Thursday until Feb. 7. For more information visit the library link at www.orem.org.

Henry explained to the group -- primarily high school students -- just how far the DNA research has come over the past 20 to 30 years.

The new technology of identifying DNA profiles in blood, saliva or skin samples was what helped criminalists link a man and woman in the community to the bones, which turned out to be those of their father, who had been missing for several years.

Criminalists used to rely solely on ABO blood typing, which required nearly a quarter-size amount of blood to get a reading for blood type.

"If the blood stain on the floor was type O and the suspect was type A, could he have left that sample?" Henry asked.

"NO!" a student in the back piped up loudly.

"I appreciate that enthusiasm. I need people like that in my lab, (with) that enthusiasm, grit," Henry said, and the audience chuckled.

Now, he explained, blood tests can be performed with only an "itty-bitty" amount of a specimen.

Based on the DNA in blood, fingerprints, hair, skin or saliva, investigators can home in on a special four-repeated sequence of DNA that essentially gives everyone a rare blood type, through the rare DNA type.

"If someone touches the chair, cup, you can swab it now and take DNA from it," Henry said. "Our technology gets better and better and more sensitive and more sensitive as we go along."

In fact, thanks to the increasing technology, one-third of their cases using DNA end up excluding the suspect based on genetic evidence.

"That should give everyone confidence in this technique," Henry said. "It's excluding and releasing people as well as helping to convict."

But their job is neither to work for the prosecutor nor defense teams. "We're an advocate for the science," Henry said. "We're for the truth."

Timothy Masters, a Colorado man sentenced to life in prison for a murder in 1987, was recently acquitted after DNA evidence from the scene didn't match his own.

But processing DNA evidence takes time.

Henry and his 24 criminalists work on nearly 5,000 criminal cases a year, and it takes them about 106 days to get DNA work done.

And that's not the only thing they do. If the lab is investigating a computer, looking for illegal images of downloaded child pornography, it can take forensic criminalists nearly 160 days. Drug identification, which is about 65 percent of their case load, takes them only a week.

But with 29 county attorney offices and 140 different law enforcement groups vying for attention, there's a big, and growing, demand, Henry said.

The Bureau of Forensic Services has four labs in Utah -- in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Price and Cedar City.

There's nothing yet in Utah County, though Henry said he is open to a partnership with law enforcement officials to get a local crime lab.

Jessica Hicken, a 10th-grade student at Timpanogos High School, said she's never seen "CSI" but found the lecture fascinating.

"I think it would be cool to do something like that," she said. "It got me thinking."

E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com

(c) 2008 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Forensic Advancements Are Abundant, Utah Expert Says
Back to Current Headlines