Colbert County Sheriff Frank Williamson
COLBERT COUNTY-The Colbert County Sheriff has issued a statement concerning DNA analyses in a murder that took place in Colbert Count in December of 2017 and how he would like to use an independent lab with state of the art technology:
“In December of 2017 we had a horrendous murder in our County.
We recovered DNA evidence at the scene to send to the Alabama Forensics Lab in Huntsville where it was tested not once but twice by the State lab and the results were the same both times. The results were that the DNA of two different individuals the major being the Victim and the minor being the unknown due to lack of being able to separate the samples.
So we set out on a mission to find a private lab that had state of the art technology which we found in Florida. This lab, DNA Labs International, that we found have developed specialized testing procedures specifically for identifying DNA mixtures. This testing procedure and program has solved many cases across 31 states in the U.S. They have contracts with 13 state forensic labs, which are members of the National DNA Index System which is a part of CODIS.
State laboratories have to approve the independent lab in order for CODIS to accept their findings. Each state has to approve and the State of Alabama Biological Forensics has refused. Dr. Jason Kokoszka, Forensic Biology Discipline Chief Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, who solely has the responsibility of approving independent lab testing has refuses in his words “I’m not jumping through hoops”.
It is our understanding in order for this to be approved it is a web-based online program through the FBI that consist of a 15 page summary and most agencies takes on average 4 hours to approve. Eight labs have gone through this process this year alone. The STRmix is a forensic software that can resolve previously unresolvable mixed DNA profiles. Developed by world leaders in the field, it uses a fully continuous approach for DNA profile interpretation, resolving complex DNA mixtures with no restriction on the number of contributors. We believe with the amount of DNA recovered from the scene this lab will be successful in identifying our perpetrator and prosecuting the case.”
