Author AThornton

The Ohio legislature is currently considering a bill that would expand the list of crimes in which offenders are required to hand over DNA to the state. These crimes include voyeurism, public indecency, soliciting a prostitute and prostitution. Some legislators, who… Continue Reading →

The Camden County Police Department has hired experts in forensics and obtained new technology that allows them to conduct DNA testing and other crime scene investigative work on-site, rather than shipping off the evidence to Trenton, where it could take… Continue Reading →

Following a civil settlement awarding $8 million to Sedrick Courtney, a man convicted of robbery but later exonerated by DNA evidence, the city of Tulsa announced that it will not audit all of the cases worked on by Carol Cox,… Continue Reading →

Read about the various ways that DNA can be transferred and what that means for suspects of crimes, here.

A retired detective, Sgt. John Laurie, worked on an abduction case of a first-grade boy in Los Angeles in 1986. Recently, he recognized a suspect from the case on the news. He then called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s cold case unit…. Continue Reading →

The ABFO remains the strongest advocacy group in favor of bite mark evidence, despite recent court decisions overturning convictions based on bite mark evidence. Learn more about the ABFO and standing of bite mark evidence in this Washington Post opinion piece.

23andMe released a Transparency Report disclosing requests by police departments for DNA data from 23andMe customers. The Report breaks down the data by geographical region and reports whether the DNA data was provided by 23andMe. At this point, only four requests have been made… Continue Reading →

A team of scientists in Australia developed a liquid that can be applied to solid, nonporous surfaces and produces fingerprints under a blacklight within 30 seconds. The liquid contains metal organic framework (MOF) crystals that bind to residue left behind by… Continue Reading →

Police ran a DNA test on a sock dropped outside of a burglary scene in Columbus, Ohio; this sock now links a suspect to this three year old crime.

Police have begun using private DNA databases, such as Ancestry.com, to produce DNA matches using familial DNA searching. Brenden Koerner weighs in on the use of familial DNA searching in this Wired article.