MANATEE — It was a “shot in the dark,” but it led to an arrest a year after the crime.
Palmetto police investigators had a major property crime on their hands two years ago, and were lucky to have some DNA evidence. Detectives submitted the sample to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to be tested for entry in state and federal databases.
“We had a lot of property stolen in this particular crime,” said Palmetto Police Lt. Scott Tyler. “But there was not a lot of evidence.”
Yet testing of the sample was not high on FDLE’s priority list — rightly so, Tyler said, because even Palmetto police didn’t have the highest of hopes the DNA would lead to an arrest.
Police had to wait a year for the sample to be tested, and it did lead to an arrest. The DNA matched an offender in a law enforcement database.
“It was really a shot in the dark, but it paid off,” said Tyler. “It took a while, but we were OK with that because in the end it worked.”
Tyler’s case exemplifies the successes and pitfalls law enforcement agencies are facing in the high-tech world of DNA.
In the 1990s, DNA testing came into its own and prosecutors began getting convictions based on the forensic evidence. On the flip side, many convictions of the innocent were overturned based on DNA.
As the use of DNA among law enforcement continued to spread, its popularity led to a whole new breed of problems as state and private laboratories were inundated with samples to be tested.
A backlog at the FBI’s DNA lab may have caused a monthslong delay this year in the identification of Delmer Smith, as reported by the Bradenton Herald. Smith has since been charged with several home invasions and sexual assaults in Sarasota County, and may still be linked to more attacks in Manatee and Sarasota.
Local law enforcement officials say the time and costs of submitting DNA is worth the return of investigative leads and arrests, and most say they are sending out as much forensic evidence as they can.
Still, delays and funding concerns have led law enforcement officials across the country to weigh whether DNA submissions are worth it, a new U.S. Department of Justice study released this month has confirmed.
‘It could be the key’
Backlogs and long wait times have dissuaded law enforcement elsewhere from submitting DNA samples even in some major homicide and rape cases, according to the DOJ study.
In a 2007 survey of 2,250 law enforcement agencies across the nation, there were an estimated 6,728 unsolved homicides, 33,696 unsolved rapes and 4.7 million unsolved property crimes.
Among those unsolved crimes, the agencies reported that forensic evidence was collected in 88 percent of the homicides, 73 percent of the rapes and 29 percent of the property crimes, the DOJ study states.
But of those cases, forensic evidence, including DNA, was not submitted for testing in an estimated 3,975 of the homicide cases, and 27,595 rapes. Of those cases, 40 percent had DNA evidence that was not submitted, according to the study.
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