AUSTIN, TEXAS – May 28, 2024 – The Washington D.C. Superior Court has found a defendant guilty in connection with a fatal shooting that took place in October 2022, due in part to Signature Science’s DNA testing and expert witness testimony.
DNA testing was outsourced to Signature Science’s accredited forensic DNA casework laboratory. Evidence submitted for testing included a live round of ammunition, a spent shell casing, and swabs from a large-capacity magazine. A team of Signature Science analysts determined that the magazine and spent shell casing produced profiles suitable for comparisons to the suspect’s known reference sample. Based on the testing results, Signature Science analyst Jamie Haas testified during the trial that the defendant may have been a contributor to the DNA profiles obtained from some tested items.
To test the spent shell casing, Signature Science employed FRISC™, our patented method for the recovery of DNA from spent shell casings. “This is an exciting time to be a DNA analyst,” said Stephanie Hickey, the analyst who performed the DNA interpretation and reporting for the case. “Spent shell casings are a challenging sample type, and one from which the law enforcement community is not yet accustomed to receiving informative results. Cases like this one, where DNA results provided potentially probative information to the jury, can change that perception.”
DNA extraction and analysis was performed in Signature Science’s ANAB-Accredited Forensic DNA Laboratories in Austin, TX.
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About Signature Science, LLC:A subsidiary of the Southwest Research Institute, Signature Science, LLC is a scientific and technical consulting firm providing multi-disciplinary applied research, technology design and development, and scientific, technical, and operational services to government and industry.