IAPE Evidence Blog

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Georga & Tennessee

By Michael Berry and Joan Berry

In 2004, just days before Christ­mas, we received a phone call that no par­ent should ever have to receive. Our lit­tle girl, Joh­nia, had been bru­tally stabbed by a rob­ber in her apart­ment. Joh­nia, a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee, was alive when law enforce­ment arrived on the scene. But while we hur­ried from our home in Geor­gia to the hos­pi­tal, our daugh­ter died.

The anguish we went through is beyond words. We grieved while the sheriff’s depart­ment inter­viewed more than 1,000 peo­ple and sub­mit­ted more than 400 DNA sam­ples from sus­pects. Time con­tin­ued to pass — and we received no clo­sure. It was not until three years after our daughter’s mur­der that her killer was caught. He had been con­victed on an unre­lated crime and his DNA matched the DNA that was found in Johnia’s apart­ment. While await­ing trial, her killer took his own life.

We knew that her killer could have been brought to jus­tice ear­lier had he pro­vided his DNA upon his arrest rather than his con­vic­tion. Hav­ing had that sam­ple ear­lier would have saved law enforce­ment pre­cious inves­ti­ga­tion time and would have lim­ited our three years of know­ing that the man who killed our daugh­ter was on the loose and pos­si­bly destroy­ing the lives of others.

We turned our grief into action and we began to research what other states were doing around DNA col­lec­tion — and we began to work for change. In 2007, the Ten­nessee Leg­is­la­ture passed the Joh­nia Berry Act — a bill allow­ing for the col­lec­tion of DNA (via cheek swab) from felony arrestees at the same time they give their fin­ger­prints and mug shots.

And now, with the help of state Rep. Rob Teil­het (D-Smyrna) and a num­ber of other bipar­ti­san spon­sors, we are work­ing to pass the Joh­nia Berry Act in our state of Georgia.

Some, includ­ing colum­nist Bob Barr, argue against this life-saving leg­is­la­tion, say­ing that it raises con­sti­tu­tional con­cerns, that it only “might” help law enforce­ment, and that Georgia’s data­base is already suf­fi­cient. We could not dis­agree more.

Twenty-one other states have passed this leg­is­la­tion and it is pend­ing in 15 oth­ers. Chal­lenges to the statute have lost and the Vir­ginia Supreme Court has ruled that the col­lec­tion of DNA upon felony arrest is, indeed, constitutional.

Empir­i­cal data from stud­ies con­ducted in Chicago, Den­ver, Mass­a­chu­setts, Cal­i­for­nia, Indi­ana and more have soundly proven that this mea­sure will actu­ally pre­vent crime from hap­pen­ing, ensure that the right per­son is held account­able (dimin­ish­ing the effect of bias), free the inno­cent, and save money in the long run.

Cur­rently, Geor­gia col­lects DNA from only those con­victed of cer­tain felonies — not all of them. Our GBI crime lab, while run by ded­i­cated indi­vid­u­als, is under­funded and severely lack­ing when com­pared to other states. Law enforce­ment deserves every tool avail­able to them to keep us safe.

We invite crit­ics to sit down with us, as Rep. Teil­het has, hear our story, and then con­sider whether or not pol­i­tics is involved in this life-saving bill.

House Bill 1033, the Joh­nia Berry Act, is essen­tial, life-saving leg­is­la­tion. Every vic­tim of a crime is a per­son who’s life is per­ma­nently changed or ended. And every vic­tim has a mother and a father and other loved ones. We pray that other par­ents will never have to live through what we have, and that every child has a chance at a full life with­out crime. We pray that any fam­ily who loses a loved one will be able to rely on this leg­is­la­tion to assist with clo­sure and bring the cor­rect per­pe­tra­tor to jus­tice. The Joh­nia Berry Act is the begin­ning to the answer of our prayers.

Michael and Joan Berry, par­ents of Joh­nia Berry, live in Lawrenceville.

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

myeyewitnessnews.com
BYLINE: Jeni DiPrizio, Email: jdiprizio@myeyewitnessnews.com
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Mem­phis, TN

MEMPHIS, TN — We’ve found another prob­lem at the Mem­phis Fire Depart­ment. This time it has to do with the room where evi­dence is kept for arson cases.

Accord­ing to a 2008 report, the evi­dence room has been a mess for years. Pic­tures show cans of flam­ma­ble items rust­ing away. The report found the fire depart­ment was vio­lat­ing its own fire codes by improp­erly stor­ing material.

It says a num­ber of items in stor­age have started to dete­ri­o­rate caus­ing a toxic environment.

The prob­lem is now on City Coun­cil­man Jim Strickland’s radar. Strick­land says “I don’t want to risk pros­e­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als because of the faulty stor­age of evidence.”

For more than a year, evi­dence has been sit­ting inside stor­age con­tain­ers next to the evi­dence room, while the city has been ren­o­vat­ing the build­ing to get the room up to code. All those com­bustible mate­ri­als are sit­ting together in a stor­age con­tainer dur­ing hot Mem­phis sum­mers and cold win­ters. Mem­phis Fire insists the metal stor­age con­tain­ers are cli­mate controlled.

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

The Daily News Jour­nal (Murfrees­boro, TN)
BYLINE: NEWS01, MARK BELL, MBELL@DNJ.COM

Ruther­ford County, TN

A for­mer detec­tive and cur­rent patrol sergeant for the Sheriff’s Office was called as a defense wit­ness Tues­day to tes­tify on miss­ing evi­dence in a 1982 mur­der case.

Randy McFar­lin, also known as Mac Ray Mac­Far­lane is on trial for the 1982 killing of Erras­tus Gene Stump, who was found mur­dered near Lamar Road and Percy Priest Lake in North­east­ern Ruther­ford County in April 1982.

Charles Barnes, a for­mer detec­tive and cur­rent patrol sergeant at the Ruther­ford County Sheriff’s Office, tes­ti­fied that he was assigned to the McFar­lin case in 1996 but was unable to find some phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case that was sup­posed to be stored at the Sheriff’s Office.

Defense Attor­ney Luke Evans asked if he took wit­ness state­ments from Donna Bur­roughs, McFarlin’s ex-wife, and other wit­nesses in the case. Barnes replied that he did and that they had trou­ble remem­ber­ing cer­tain facts about the case.

Evans asked if, at some point, he said dur­ing an inter­view with a wit­ness: “The fact of the mat­ter is if you didn’t see any­thing in 1982, you are not going to remem­ber what hap­pened are you?”

Barnes, who said he couldn’t recall the state­ment, later replied that if it is a recorded state­ment, then he would not deny say­ing it.

Evans then asked Barnes if phys­i­cal evi­dence is impor­tant in cases.

Barnes said some evi­dence is impor­tant but other evi­dence can be unim­por­tant in other circumstances.

Evans pointed out that Barnes never made an arrest in the case and that “impor­tant phys­i­cal evi­dence” has dis­ap­peared in the case.

On cross, Dis­trict Attor­ney Bill White­sell asked Barnes if he recalled review­ing phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case, includ­ing the skull of Gene Stump.

“That would be phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case, cor­rect,” White­sell asked. Barnes replied that it would be phys­i­cal evi­dence and that he did review it.

White­sell then pointed out other phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case that is still in exis­tence, but asked Barnes if the evi­dence that is lost might have helped McFarlin.

He replied “not to my knowledge.”

- Mark Bell, 615 – 278-5153

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