What was a half-eaten piece of chicken seven years ago might today help identify who was responsible for the 1993 slayings at a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta restaurant in Palatine.
And what in 1990 was just a dot of semen the size of a pinprick proved in 1998 that Chicagoan John Willis was not, in fact, the notorious “beauty shop rapist.”
Advances in DNA testing allow increasingly precise genetic identifications from ever smaller and more degraded pieces of evidence. These new technologies allowed investigators in recent months to extract saliva from the chicken believed eaten by the Brown’s killer, and to prove that Willis was wrongly imprisoned for crimes he did not commit.
Whereas a decade ago a quarter-sized smear of blood was needed to make a genetic identification, today all that’s needed is a licked postage stamp, a discarded toothpick or the sweat inside a baseball cap.
Problem is, chicken bones, semen smears and other evidence often get misfiled, lost or even destroyed.
The Cook County Public Defender’s office currently has a dozen cases in which requests for DNA testing have been stymied because of missing evidence.
That is precisely what happened to John Willis. For six months prosecutors told his attorneys the laboratory slide that would free him of his 100-year prison sentence was missing. Fortunately for him, the sample slide finally was located.
And that is why a state DNA preservation law awaiting Gov. George Ryan’s signature by next week is a sound and necessary measure. It would require safe and secure keeping of all murder and rape case evidence that might have a bearing on a defendant’s guilt or innocence as new technologies emerge.
It seeks to standardize the current hodgepodge of rules across the state regarding preservation, and would hold criminally responsible police or prosecutors who intentionally destroy evidence–a provision that particularly rankles prosecutors. But why shouldn’t a law enforcement official be held criminally responsible for willfully destroying what could be an individual’s only hope of truth?
Some also cite the burden of storing items with “little forensic value” such as cars and rolled-up carpets, for so long. But drawing lines between which evidence should be saved and which may be destroyed guarantees trouble. And who really knows what kinds of truths those items of “little forensic value” might reveal 20 years hence with the aid of future technologies that are unimaginable today. Ryan should sign the bill.
