FBI won't enter sample from Staker slaying in DNA database

FBI won't enter sample from Staker slaying in DNA database


Lab that worked on evidence from 1992 rape, killing not accredited

By Dan Hinkel, Chicago Tribune reporter
February 13, 2012

A rich source of potential criminal suspects — a federal database with millions of DNA profiles — is going unexamined as authorities in Lake County reopen the investigation into the 1992 rape and slaying of 11-year-old Holly Staker.

The FBI refuses to enter the DNA profile from the Staker case into its forensic library because the lab that worked up the genetic fingerprint wasn't accredited. Lake County or Waukegan law enforcement officials could file suit seeking to compel a search — the Staker evidence hasn't been checked for a potential match since 2009, and then only because of a federal court order — but local officials have given no indication they intend to do that.

FBI spokeswoman Special Agent Ann Todd said, to her knowledge, no one had even requested another search.

Since it was last searched for a potential suspect in the Staker case, the FBI's DNA clearinghouse has grown from about 6.5 million genetic fingerprints of offenders to about 10.4 million. But the FBI's stance that federal law prohibits it from running the profile through the database hasn't changed, Todd said.

Investigators are digging back into the crime in the wake of the court-ordered release of Juan Rivera, the former Waukegan man who spent nearly 20 years in prison for the slaying before appeals judges reversed his conviction and freed him last month.

In a criminal case beset by doubt and characterized by legal U-turns over the decades, the powerful forensic tool could point investigators in a new direction. But it's not being used.

"We're talking about the murder of an 11-year-old girl, and (the FBI) may have the identity of that murderer in their database," said Rob Warden, executive director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, whose lawyers have represented Rivera. "And they're refusing to check."

The profile, drawn from semen found inside the victim, remains ineligible to be added permanently or even run through the FBI's DNA database because the private California lab that worked with the evidence on behalf of Rivera's defense team wasn't accredited by one of the federal government's approved agencies, Todd said.

Those who support the accreditation process say it's necessary to ensure private labs are using functional equipment, employing capable personnel and following best practices.

But the renowned scientist who worked with a colleague to develop the profile, Edward Blake, angrily calls the accreditation process "artifice being substituted for something legitimate." Though he now works for an accredited lab, Blake says the process doesn't truly assess the trustworthiness of a lab's work and notes that scandals and errors have plagued labs that have the certification.

"You don't make judgments based upon a mere credential. I have credentials. They're just not ones dictated to me by the FBI," he said. "Juan Rivera was lucky. What about the next guy? You see how stupid this whole thing is?"

Blake noted that the quality of his lab's work in the Staker case is not in doubt, and he accused the FBI of "obstruction of justice." Accreditation should not determine whether a rigorously developed profile is even run through a database, he argued.

The disagreement over accreditation centers on the FBI's National DNA Index System, known as NDIS, a database that takes in profiles contained in the federal library as well as qualifying genetic fingerprints from the state and local DNA databases.

The database generated major news in another Lake County case less than two years ago.

Jerry Hobbs spent five years in jail awaiting trial on charges he killed his 8-year-old daughter, Laura, and her 9-year-old friend Krystal Tobias in a Zion park in 2005. While semen found inside his daughter's body didn't belong to Hobbs, prosecutors argued — as they have in other cases involving DNA — that the evidence didn't clear their suspect.

But in February 2010, a former Marine from Zion, Jorge Torrez, was arrested and charged with a nearly fatal sex attack and abduction in Virginia. His DNA profile went into the database, where it matched the forensic evidence from the girls' killings, according to court records. A few months later, Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller dropped the charges against Hobbs, freeing him in August 2010.

Torrez, who was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in the Virginia case, has not been charged with the Zion slayings. He does face federal charges he killed a 20-year-old Navy petty officer in her barracks in 2009.

In Rivera's case, during the years before the appeals court ended the court fight, his defense lawyers had hoped to exonerate him by using DNA to reveal a link to an alternative suspect in the slaying of Holly Staker as she baby-sat two children in 1992. Rivera had confessed, but his lawyers argued his admission, taken during a grueling series of interrogations, was false.

Faced with aging, degraded evidence, Rivera's lawyers turned to Blake, then of Forensic Science Associates outside San Francisco. He was hired because he is "unequivocally a great pioneer in the field," said Lawrence Marshall of Rivera's defense team.

In March 2005, Blake's lab isolated a full DNA profile of the man who was the source of the semen.

But because the lab hadn't submitted itself to accreditation, the FBI refused to put the profile in its database or run a one-time query called a "keyboard search," citing federal law, according to court records. Rivera's lawyers sued the FBI, and federal Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ordered the search in February 2009, calling the FBI's objections "unpersuasive."

No match was found, and months later Rivera was again found guilty of the Staker slaying at his third trial in Lake County.

But in part because the DNA profile did not match Rivera himself, an Illinois appellate court late last year reversed that conviction, and Rivera, now 39, was released from prison Jan. 6.

Left with an unsolved murder case two decades old, Waukegan detectives are poring through materials and following up on "a few tips," police Chief Daniel Greathouse said.

It remained unclear, though, whether Waukegan police or the Lake County prosecutor's office might seek a search of the database, despite the FBI's strong resistance. Greathouse wouldn't say, and Waller did not return calls for comment. Waukegan police said that when Rivera was freed, they were reopening the case; the state's attorney's office has not indicated if it is also searching for a new suspect.

Illinois State Police spokeswoman Monique Bond would not say whether the profile from the Staker case is in the state's database, though she added that profiles must come from accredited labs to gain entry. Rivera's lawyers said they do not believe the profile is in the state database.

Though the controversy means authorities could be missing an opportunity to find a new suspect in the Staker crime, the supervisor of one of the forensic lab auditing groups defends the federal government's insistence on accreditation.

"(The FBI) needs to at least have some recognition and some assurance from third-party assessors … to see that (the lab) is at the same level as everyone else," said Patricia Bencivenga, assistant accreditation manager at Forensic Quality Services.

Bencivenga argued that the accreditation process "absolutely does work." The process, she said, includes a physical visit and assesses everything from maintenance of the lab's equipment to the credentials of the lab's scientists to the quality of the work done in individual cases. A lab's accreditation is updated with an on-site visit every other year and a document review during the off-years, she said.

"It's impossible with any type of quality-control mechanism to prevent every error from happening," Bencivenga said, but she added that the process can identify problems in a lab, correct them and prevent them from recurring.

Disputes over accreditation aside, those who pushed for Rivera's freedom hope an accord can be reached that would allow the database to be searched again, and on a regular basis, for the profile of the man who matches the evidence in the Staker case. It makes no sense, they said, to let a major investigative weapon sit idle.

"We know who committed this crime. We have this person's genetic fingerprint," said Jane Raley, a lawyer from the Center on Wrongful Convictions. "We just don't have his name."

dhinkel@tribune.com

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-staker-dna-database-20120213,0,246073.story?page=2

Editor's note: Your ProbateShark believes that it is time to have a competent Coroner in charge of the Lake County Coroner's office to prevent any future Rivera type debacles. In the past Lake County has had an assortment of druggies, office help and political hacks running the office.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com