IAPE Evidence Blog

AP Enterprise: — KansasCity.com
BYLINE: TODD RICHMOND, Asso­ci­ated Press Writer
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Mil­wau­kee, IL

Dur­ing what police say was a 20-year killing spree in Mil­wau­kee, Wal­ter Ellis left his DNA behind all along the way — every­where but the one place where it might have saved a life.

Ellis should have given a DNA sam­ple to the state crime data­bank dur­ing a prison stint in the early part of this decade, but he had another inmate pose as him, author­i­ties say. As a result, when ana­lysts tried to iden­tify DNA in bod­ily flu­ids from one of the slay­ings back in 2003, no matches turned up.

Inves­ti­ga­tors didn’t con­nect Ellis to the crimes until this fall, when they seized genetic mate­r­ial from his tooth­brush. By then, it was too late for the woman police say was Ellis’ sev­enth and final victim.

“If they would have got his DNA when they were sup­posed to get it, maybe my cousin would still be here,” said Sarah Stokes, whose cousin, 28-year-old pros­ti­tute Ouithreaun Stokes, was found beaten and stran­gled in an aban­doned room­ing house in 2007.

An Asso­ci­ated Press review found tens of thou­sands of DNA sam­ples are miss­ing from state data­banks across the coun­try because they were never taken or were lost. The miss­ing evi­dence — com­bined with big back­logs at the nation’s crime labs that result in DNA sam­ples sit­ting on shelves for years with­out being ana­lyzed and entered into the data­banks — is pre­vent­ing inves­ti­ga­tors from crack­ing untold num­bers of cases. And some of those gaps have had tragic consequences.

“If you got miss­ing sam­ples, some of those peo­ple are out there rap­ing your wives and abduct­ing and mur­der­ing your chil­dren this week,” said for­mer Char­lottesville, Va., police Capt. J.E. Hard­ing, who helped uncover miss­ing sam­ples in that state dur­ing a search for a ser­ial rapist.

Crime lab super­vi­sors, state police and prison offi­cials blame the fail­ure to col­lect sam­ples on new and con­fus­ing laws and a lack of coor­di­na­tion among the many dif­fer­ent law enforce­ment agen­cies and insti­tu­tions respon­si­ble for tak­ing DNA.

“I would just about guar­an­tee you every state has an issue with this,” said Lisa Hurst, who tracks DNA con­vic­tions for Gor­don Thomas Hon­ey­well, an orga­ni­za­tion that lob­bies on pub­lic safety and biotech­nol­ogy issues.

The AP review found 27 states either failed to col­lect some DNA sam­ples or are unable to say whether they took one from every offender who owes one.

The case against Ellis, who is set to go trial this spring, prompted an audit in Wis­con­sin that found 12,000 con­vict sam­ples are miss­ing. The AP review fur­ther found that Illi­nois failed to get DNA from about 50,000 offend­ers, Col­orado from 2,000, and Vir­ginia from about 8,400.

Exactly how many sam­ples are miss­ing across the coun­try is unknown. The National Insti­tute of Jus­tice esti­mated in 2003 that offend­ers owed up to 1 mil­lion uncol­lected sam­ples and as many as 300,000 sam­ples may be wait­ing for pro­cess­ing. The back­log grew to about 450,000 by 2008. The insti­tute had no updated esti­mate of uncol­lected samples.

At least 13 states are deal­ing with more sam­ples than they can han­dle. Kansas, for exam­ple, has nearly 40,000 on its crime lab shelves, wait­ing for upload.

Police in Colum­bus, Ohio, say Robert N. Pat­ton Jr. com­mit­ted 37 rapes over a decade and a half. As with Ellis in Mil­wau­kee, he could have been stopped earlier.

Pat­ton had sub­mit­ted his DNA in 2001 while behind bars for bur­glary, but it was not entered into the data­base until 2004, two days before he climbed through an apart­ment win­dow and raped Diana Cun­ning­ham. Police say he attacked 13 women in all after sup­ply­ing his DNA.

If Patton’s genetic mate­r­ial “had been processed in a timely fash­ion, he never would have got­ten to me or got­ten to any of the oth­ers,” said Cun­ning­ham, now 25. “It’s scary how many more peo­ple are going to be vic­tim­ized because their attack­ers aren’t going to be caught. And it would be so easy for them to be caught if they could make the matches.”

Pat­ton is now serv­ing a 68-year prison sentence.

State data­banks con­tain hun­dreds of thou­sands of sam­ples. The FBI’s national data­base, built with states’ uploads, held 7.4 mil­lion as of September.

Over the past 15 years, tough-on-crime leg­is­la­tors expanded laws to require DNA from more offend­ers. First it was sex offend­ers. Today, 47 states demand DNA from every con­victed felon. Twenty-one take it from any­one arrested for homi­cide or a sex crime, accord­ing to Gor­don Thomas Honeywell.

Gen­er­ally, prison offi­cials col­lect DNA from inmates as they enter the insti­tu­tion, often by swab­bing the prisoner’s mouth. Local police, sheriff’s depart­ments or pro­ba­tion offi­cers are also sup­posed to take sam­ples. That means a pro­fu­sion of col­lec­tion points.

But the laws are so fluid that the agen­cies respon­si­ble for col­lect­ing DNA strug­gle to track which offend­ers owe sam­ples, author­i­ties say. The New Mex­ico lab has taken to send­ing wall charts to sheriff’s depart­ments to help them keep things straight.

Wis­con­sin Gov. Jim Doyle has blamed his state’s miss­ing DNA, in part, on con­fu­sion over the laws dur­ing the early days and no clear idea of who was in charge.

Roughly half the states have some cross-check between their labs and prison sys­tems to ensure every­one who owes a sam­ple has given it, the AP found. For exam­ple, Michi­gan DNA admin­is­tra­tors and state prison offi­cials com­pare infor­ma­tion annu­ally. Vir­ginia requires that it be done quar­terly. But half the states have no such procedures.

Robyn Quinn, Delaware’s DNA data­base admin­is­tra­tor, said she is sure her state is miss­ing DNA, but has no idea how much, cit­ing lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between her office and the Cor­rec­tions Department.

“The other end is a black hole for me. We have no way of get­ting into their sys­tem to see who is sup­posed to be col­lected,” she said. “I am wait­ing for some­thing to hit the fan, if you will.”

Asso­ci­ated Press writ­ers Robert Imrie con­tributed from Wausau, Wis., and Car­rie Antlfin­ger from Milwaukee.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Belleville News-Democrat (Illi­nois)
BYLINE: BETH HUNDSDORFER, News-Democrat, bhundsdorfer@bnd.com

Alton, IL

An Alton police officer’s fed­eral con­vic­tion for steal­ing and lying put into jeop­ardy the pros­e­cu­tion of 1,300 pend­ing Madi­son County cases — one-third of all the county’s felony fil­ings, accord­ing to fed­eral court documents.

When Mickey L. Doo­ley, 50, a for­mer evi­dence tech­ni­cian for the Alton Police Depart­ment, was con­victed in Sep­tem­ber 2008, he was named as a poten­tial wit­ness in 1,300 pend­ing cases, includ­ing drug felonies and murders.

Fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors esti­mated that as many as 50 state felony pros­e­cu­tions were affected by Doo­ley, result­ing in reduced charges, dis­missals and rene­go­ti­ated dis­po­si­tions result­ing in unwar­ranted leniency.

“Evi­dence was pre­sented at sen­tenc­ing that Dooley’s actions have adversely affected numer­ous fed­eral and state pros­e­cu­tions where Doo­ley was or is in the chain of cus­tody of evi­dence,” stated a release by the U.S. attorney’s office.

A fed­eral jury con­victed Doo­ley of evi­dence tam­per­ing, fraud, receiv­ing stolen prop­erty, tax eva­sion and theft last year. Pros­e­cu­tors said he took money stolen from a bank rob­bery from Olin Credit Union and U.S. Bank. Doo­ley served as the department’s evi­dence cus­to­dian for three years until July 2008 when an audit of the evi­dence vault uncov­ered miss­ing money. The 24-year police vet­eran was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave after the audit was completed.

Pros­e­cu­tors alleged Doo­ley devel­oped a sev­ered gam­bling habit and used money from the police’s evi­dence vault to gamble.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge G. Patrick Mur­phy resen­tenced Mickey Doo­ley after an appel­late court reversed his con­vic­tion on a wire fraud charge ear­lier this year. It was the same prison time Mur­phy imposed last year.

In addi­tion to prison time, Doo­ley was ordered to pay a total of $48,748 in resti­tu­tion, a $650 fine and a $725 spe­cial assessment.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

www.wrex.com
Link to Article

East St Louis, IL

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — A for­mer Alton police offi­cer who stole money from an evi­dence vault and lied to inves­ti­ga­tors has been resen­tenced to a decade in fed­eral prison.

A fed­eral judge in East St. Louis also ordered 50-year-old Mickey Doo­ley to pay nearly $49,000 in restitution.

Doo­ley was indicted in Jan­u­ary 2008 on charges that accused him of lying to inves­ti­ga­tors, steal­ing money from an evi­dence room and com­mit­ting wire fraud, among other crimes. Jurors con­victed him in Sep­tem­ber 2008.

A fed­eral appeals court in Chicago later reversed Dooley’s con­vic­tion on a wire-fraud count and ordered him resen­tenced. The pun­ish­ment imposed Mon­day was the same as his orig­i­nal sentence.

Pros­e­cu­tors alleged the 24-year Alton police vet­eran used the stolen money from the evi­dence vault to sup­port a gam­bling habit.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org