Transcript of Dr. Dan Krane’s DNA info related to the JBR case: Tricia’s radio blogcast, Sunday, August 18, 2013
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/websleu...t-8-pm-eastern
(Special thanks to KoldKase for her help with the transcript.)
Dr Krane’s website:
http://www.bioforensics.com/
Dr Krane’s CV:
http://www.bioforensics.com/CV/KraneCV01-12.pdf
The following begins at 52:30 and extends to the end of the show segment with Dr. Krane
Cynic: I cannot let you go, Dr Krane, without your thoughts regarding the DNA evidence in the JonBenet case. I know that when we spoke, and when we emailed one another, you made some interesting comments that need to be said, so I’m going to give people a real quick lead-in and then let you take it away.
I don’t want to get into the minutia of the DNA case primarily because I don’t have the time,
but I would like to focus on the DNA that’s been in the mainstream media for many years with respect to the JonBenet case.
One area in the crotch of JonBenet’s underpants that was tested revealed a profile that was ultimately uploaded to the FBI database, CODIS.
JonBenet was the major donor by virtue of contributing blood, and there was an unknown minor male profile from unknown cellular material.
That minor unknown male profile was a mixed profile with drop-out because only 10 out of 13 loci were found.
In 2008 the long johns which were worn over the underpants were sent to a private lab, Bode, as I’ve already touched on before, and they did razor scraping and so on, and it was publicly revealed that this testing resulted in DNA profiles which, while weaker than the CODIS profile, were considered to match.
So we know that these profiles were 9 loci or less.
There are, of course, a number of possible transfer mechanisms between two articles of clothing, one worn tightly over the other, you know, it could have been transfer based on that.
It could have been something that happened perhaps at the autopsy, perhaps proper safeguards weren’t in place.
Things were touched, even with gloves, it doesn’t matter, if you’re touching certain evidentiary items if you touch others without changing your gloves it’s possible that that could be a source of contamination.
Even the coroner or medical examiner, if handling instruments that weren’t properly cleaned, could have transferred from previous autopsies, and so on; there’s just a number of ways, as we’ve touched on throughout this broadcast in terms of transferring DNA evidence.
I would like to focus, however, on the fact that this was a mixed sample with drop-out-- and by drop-out I mean we don’t have information at all of the loci. For example, if I were to take a swab, a cheek swab, and send it to the lab I would have all thirteen of the CODIS loci light up and there would be a full profile.
These are partial profiles, also mixed; at least we know for a fact that the blood spot was mixed because it primarily had JonBenet’s blood.
You’ve made the statement, and it’s one that I’ve actually never heard before. You’ve told me that there is no generally accepted means of attaching a reliable statistical weight to a mixed DNA profile where allelic drop out may have occurred. You then went on to tell me that, essentially what this means is that, in your opinion, from the evidence that I sent you that this DNA evidence really could not be presented in court. Could you comment?
Dr Krane: I’m sad that you hadn’t heard that before because that means that we’re not doing a good enough job of getting the word out, and often a big part of my job when I get involved with a case is educating attorneys and educating juries about things like that: that at the present time there is no generally accepted means of attaching a statistical weight to a mixed DNA profile where drop-out may have occurred.
In other words, we’re getting partial or incomplete information about one of the contributors.
Now, in an unmixed sample, we can deal with drop-out; but in a mixed sample, I don’t think we have the time for me to explain to you the underlying reasoning behind it, but it’s just not possible for us at the present time. It’s not for lack of trying.
At the Forensic Science Service (based in the UK), before it went out of business a few years ago, had invested millions of pounds into solving this problem. There are some people now starting to say that there might be some way to attach weight to those kinds of samples. But here’s what it all comes down to: there’s an abundance of case law within the United States that says that if you can’t attach a statistical weight to a DNA inclusion, saying that someone matches an evidence sample, if you can’t put a number on that--one in a million, one in a quintillion, something like that-- you can’t admit it as evidence. It is not something that can be presented to a jury because they simply won’t know what weight to give it if you can’t attach a reliable statistical weight.
So, absent a statistical weight all that can really be said is, about a mixed sample where drop-out might have occurred, is that the test results are inconclusive. We simply are in no better position to say if an individual has contributed to a profile or not, relative to where we were before the test or after the test was performed.
So, the samples that you’re talking about here, the blood stain in the JonBenet Ramsey case from the crotch of the panties, I think at the end of the day that’s simply not something that could be presented to a jury. Now it could be used to generate investigative leads, law enforcement could use Ouija boards to generate investigative leads if they like…
Tricia: Exactly, there you go.
Dr Krane: …but it’s not something that you could talk about in court.
Tricia: Exactly.
Cynic: Tricia, this is concerning Mary Lacy, our “friend,” so I would be remiss if I let Dan go without this real quick point.
We also spoke about this:
The District Attorney went from saying this in 2006: "The DNA could be an artifact. It isn’t necessarily the killer’s… “
To, in 2008, saying: “Unexplained DNA on the victim of a crime is powerful evidence. The match of male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items. Despite substantial efforts over the years to identify the source of this DNA, there is no innocent explanation for its incriminating presence at three sites on these two different items of clothing that JonBenet was wearing at the time of her murder.”
When you and I talked I just asked you as a hypothetical, if a District Attorney is, for example, exonerating people that were suspects for many years based exclusively on the DNA that we’ve just discussed here, is that an overreach?
Dr Krane:
Well, let me draw particular attention to the word, “exclusively”: right, if that is the sole basis for the decision, I think that conveys a lack of understanding of what’s involved with those particular types of DNA test results.
Tricia: Thank you, perfect, keep going – I just wanted to hear that. That’s exactly what we wanted to hear. Please continue and we’ll wrap it up.
Dr Krane: Well, I don’t know that there’s too much more to say. It’s an overreach in the sense that, again,
we’re talking here about something that couldn’t be presented to a jury and it’s an overreach because it seems to be violating, or it has the potential to violate, that axiom that I began with: that the presence of a DNA profile doesn’t necessarily say anything about the time frame or the circumstances. We can’t say that it got there because it was deposited during the commission of a crime; we can’t say it got there because the laundry had been done in a way that got somebody else’s DNA there; or it could have come there through contamination after the evidence had been collected and handled in a lab.
There’s so many different ways that the DNA could have gotten there that, that by itself, those partial profiles, that’s not something that we should be attaching that kind of weight to.
