Defrosting Cold Cases

New York Governor David Paterson announced that he is submitting legislation that will require everyone convicted of a penal law crime to provide a DNA sample. Currently, New York state only requires DNA collection after a judge convicts a suspect of any felony crime or 18 specified misdemeanors. Once the DNA sample is collected, the [...]

Tags: Actual Innocence, Capital Punishment, Crime Labs, Crime Scene, Death Row, DNA, DNA Database, Evidence, Forensics, Identification, New York, Police, Victim

Police have cracked a major cold case that’s gone unsolved for more than 30 years. Five teenagers vanished on a summer day in 1978. But now, the family members of those missing have new reason for hope. For justice, because the boys are gone forever. Suddenly gone were Randy Johnson, Michael McDowell, Melvin Pittman, Ernest Taylor [...]

Tags: Evidence, Investigations Division, Missing Persons, New York, Newark, Police

All police agencies had a deadline: by January next year, they must submit criminal fingerprints electronically to the state. Problem is, most small police agencies don’t have the equipment necessary to do that. Not only does it cost about $30,000 but software and training costs would make the switch prohibitive, a budget-buster. “That’s more than a [...]

Tags: Crime Labs, Evidence, Expert Testimony, Finger Printing, Forensics, New York, Partial Finger Printing, Police

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says his department will start videotaping police interrogations in two precincts as a pilot project this year. Rebecca Brown with the Innocence Project, a public policy group that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, says a survey of 238 jurisdictions that videotape interrogations found law enforcement officers prefer it. [...]

Tags: Actual Innocence, Capital Punishment, Evidence, Miscarriage of Justice, New York, Police, Police Interrogations, Victim, Witnesses, Wrongful Convictions

New York has become the latest of a handful of jurisdictions to permit a controversial use of DNA evidence that gives law enforcement authorities a sophisticated means to track down criminals. Under a state rule approved in December, DNA found at a crime scene that does not exactly match that of someone in the state’s [...]

Tags: DNA, DNA Database, Evidence, Forensics, New York, Victim, Witnesses