Tag Archives: dna

Chain of Custody Failures Can Destroy Your Legal Case

DNA evidence is well-validated. But if you think DNA is the perfect evidence to present at trial, think again. It may not be.

Yes, DNA evidence is scientifically based and can be presented in court under certain circumstances.

But as Forensic’s Blog points out, two issues may derail the use of DNA and other forensic evidence.

Chain of Custody

What is the “chain of custody”?

It is the DOCUMENTED trail of every person who accessed (“touched, moved, or stored”) a piece of evidence. The documentation is chronological and ideally logged in real time, not hours after the fact.

What could go wrong?

Let’s say that at 1:23 pm, Diana placed a piece of evidence in a locker and locked the locker. Then at 3:53 pm, Denis went to the locker, which was unlocked, and removed the evidence from the locker. Defense attorneys will have a field day with that, and may pressure the judge to state that the evidence is inadmissible because of possible tampering by an unidentified person.

Cross-Contamination

Closely related to the chain of custody is the possibility of cross-contamination. In the case of DNA, this happens when DNA from a crime scene is mixed with another person’s DNA.

I’ve told the story of the mystery female criminal whose DNA was found at crime scenes in three different countries over a decade. The only problem was that the woman’s DNA was found on the burned body of a MAN. Eventually the authorities figured out that the woman worked in a packing center specializing in medical supplies…and that her DNA had contaminated the medical supplies and ended up in the crime scene samples.

How to Minimize Errors

Forensic’s Blog suggests several ways to avoid chain of custody issues and cross-contamination. These include established and enforced procedures for handling, packaging, and labeling data; separating tasks; and establishing zones of exclusion at crime scenes.

In addition to establishment and enforcement, education is essential. (Sorrye.) Not only for the forensic professionals gathering the evidence, but for everyone who deals with the evidence…including biometric vendors and their customers.

If you need assistance in creating educational content for proper evidence handling, Bredemarket can help. Talk to me.

Bredemarket: Services, Process, and Pricing.

Who Can Write My Biometric Company’s Product Marketing Content?

Someone who is a biometric product marketing expert.

Someone who has three decades of expertise in biometrics.

I remember ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993.

Someone who has worked with fingerprints, faces, irises, voices, DNA, and other biometric modalities.

Some modalities. Butts and tongues not included.

Someone who understands the privacy landscape in Europe (GDPR), Illinois (BIPA), California, and elsewhere.

BIPA is a four-letter word.

Oh…and someone who can write.

A slight exaggeration.

So who can write this stuff?

I know someone. Bredemarket.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

Some great videos


Biometric product marketing expert.
Questions.
Services, process, and pricing.

Oh Yeah, That Biometric Stuff

Bredemarket works with a number of technologies, but it’s no secret that my primary focus is biometrics. After all, I call myself the “biometric product marketing expert,” having worked with friction ridge (fingerprint, palm print), face, iris, voice, and rapid DNA.

The biometric product marketing expert in the desert.

If I can help your biometric firm with your content, proposal, or analysis needs, schedule a free meeting with me to discuss how I can help.

When Technology Catches Up: 1980 Murderer of Michelle “Missy” Jones Just Convicted

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this in September 2020:

“The Fontana Police Department in San Bernardino County, California, said it arrested Leonard Nash, 66, of Las Vegas on a warrant charging him with murder in the July 5, 1980, slaying of Michelle “Missy” Jones. The young woman was found slain in a grapefruit grove in Fontana.”

So why did it take 40 years to arrest Nash?

“Police said forensic evidence was collected during Jones’ autopsy, but technology at the time did not allow it to be connected to an offender.”

In 2020, the Riverside/San Bernardino CAL-DNA Laboratory successfully obtained a profile, but it did not match the DNA profile of any known offender. Nash, a person of interest, was matched to the profile via “discarded DNA.”

Anyway, Nash was convicted this month, but the news stories that described his conviction are inaccessible to you and me.

“The Woman in Pink” Identified via INTERPOL’s “Identify Me”

It’s challenging enough to identify a unknown deceased body found in the person’s home city.

It’s more challenging to identify one somewhere else in the person’s home country.

And when the body is found outside the person’s home country…that’s when organizations such as INTERPOL step in.

“Identify Me is a public appeal to identify women whose bodies were found in six European countries, many of whom are believed to have been murdered.

“Most are cold cases; women who died 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. They were found in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, or Spain.

“Despite extensive police investigations, these women were never identified, and evidence suggests that some of them could have come from other countries. Who they are, where they are from and why they were in these countries is unknown.”

INTERPOL issues a variety of colored notices to its member countries, including the “Black Notice” to seek information on unidentified bodies. The “Identify Me” program is a public appeal for a small subset of these people.

Source: INTERPOL.

Here’s one of INTERPOL’s success stories, “The woman in pink“:

“On 3 July 2005, the body of a woman was found at the 84 km mark on the Vila road in the town of Viladecans (province of Barcelona). The woman had been dead for less than 24 hours; the cause of death was suspicious….

“A breakthrough came in 2025 when police in Türkiye ran the fingerprints associated with ‘The woman in pink’ through a national biometric database, resulting in a match with Russian national Liudmila Zavada, aged 31 at the time of her death. The match was subsequently confirmed through kinship DNA analysis using the DNA of one of Liudmila Zavada’s close relatives.”

So follow the trail:

  • There was a woman from Russia.
  • A deceased woman’s body was found in Spain.
  • Decades later, the deceased women was identified as the Russian woman via biometrics (fingerprints) in Türkiye.
  • The identification was confirmed via DNA analysis.

A true case of cross-national collaboration.

Two-year Old Cold Cases of Israelis (and Gazans) Killed After October 7, 2023

The Jerusalem Post recently published a story about Israel’s Institute of Forensic Medicine and how it identifies deceased bodies.

“From the moment the remains arrive at the institute, identification is conducted through three methods: dental records, CT scans, and DNA testing.

“Even if we identify the remains using one method, it’s not enough until we have definitive identification. In most cases, whenever possible, we perform all three methods to get a final result.” According to Kugel, this is because the “findings” often arrive in an unorganized manner, and no one knows to whom they belong.”

Oh, and there’s one additional complication. Some of the bodies died as long as two years ago. Some of these remains were returned from Gaza after the latest cease fire. I don’t know how many of these people died after October 7, 2023, but it’s possible that some of them may have.

“It’s important to understand that our daily work is to examine bodies that arrive within hours or a few days in rare cases. Here, we’re dealing with a two-year period, and that makes a significant difference in how the remains were preserved, under what conditions, and how that affects the identification process.”

But they aren’t just identifying Israelis.

“Identifying former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was a defining moment for Kugel.

“‘Once you’re with the body and examining it, you don’t think at that moment that you’re examining someone very significant. We also had to understand what caused his death. Obviously, he had a head injury, but we tried to understand what preceded what.’

“When we finished, a colleague said to me: ‘Do you understand who you’ve examined now? The man who is responsible for the massacre of thousands of people.’ You don’t think about it while working, just as with the good people who were killed in the war, you just check and identify. After that, at home, you continue to read about him and his family; it goes with you, and then you process what you go through at the institute.”

This is a common challenge in forensics. Identification of a particular person may result in a number of emotional responses, whether it is a criminal or a victim. But the forensic professional’s job is to simply examine the evidence. The grief comes later.

H/T Forensics and Law in Focus.

DNA and…Coal?

Rosalind Franklin was one of a quartet of people who were researching DNA in the 1950s. And she is popularly known…sort of.

“Since her early death at the age of 37, Rosalind Franklin has become mythologised as the victim of male prejudice, the unsung heroine who took the crucial X-ray photograph enabling James Watson and Francis Crick to build their double helix model of DNA, and was unjustly deprived of a Nobel Prize.”

A powerful story…but just a story.

“She would neither have recognised nor endorsed this soundbite description. Franklin regarded herself first and foremost not as a woman, but as a scientist, and her DNA research occupied a relatively brief period in her successful career working on a variety of topics. In particular, on top of her famous investigations into DNA, she also made foundational contributions to modern understandings of coal, graphite and viruses.”

Read about Franklin here.

(Picture from Wikipedia, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology • CC BY-SA 4.0)

Communicate with the Words of Authority

Biometric marketing leaders, do your firm’s product marketing publications require the words of authority?

John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, the biometric product marketing expert.

Can John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket—the biometric product marketing expert—contribute words of authority to your content, proposal, and analysis materials?

I offer:

  • 30 years of biometric experience, 10 years of product marketing expertise, and complementary proposal and product management talents.
  • Success with numerous biometric firms, including Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Motorola, Printrak, and over a dozen biometric consulting clients.
  • Mastery of multiple biometric modalities: friction ridge (fingerprint, palm print), face, iris, voice, DNA.
  • Compelling CONTENT creation: blog posts, case studies and testimonials, LinkedIn articles and posts, white papers.
  • Winning PROPOSAL development: managing, writing, editing for millions of dollars of business for my firms.
  • Actionable ANALYSIS: strategic, market, product, competitive.

To embed Bredemarket’s biometric product marketing expertise within your firm, schedule a free meeting with me.

Make an impact.