|
P R O C E E D I N G S POLICE AND PROSECUTORS: MAXIMIZING THE VALUE OF DNA
While the participants in the next panel are approaching the podium let me first introduce Superintendent Hillard and then he will introduce the rest of the folks. Superintendent Hillard is a 32-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department. He was appointed chief of the detective division in '95. He was appointed superintendent to the Chicago Police Department by Mayor Richard Daly in February of 1998. As superintendent, he leads the second largest municipal law enforcement agency in the United States, over 13,000 officers, 3,500 civilian employees, and a budget of nearly a billion dollars. It is probably Superintendent Hillard who brought home the importance of this stuff to the Commission, in particular I think the working group members more than anybody. You can well imagine he's a pretty busy guy. I can't tell you the number of times that as busy as he is, his commitment to this technology is such that not only does he come to all the Commission meetings, but also came to darn near every working group meeting that we had. That's not because he has got to time to throw away. It's because he recognizes that technology is the key to dealing with a lot of these resource issues, that it's time well spent, that learning this stuff and getting it out to cops is really that important that it demands or warrants that much of his time. So again both personally and on behalf of the Commission I can't thank you enough for the attention you've paid to this endeavor. Thank you.
MR. HILLARD: Good morning. What Chris didn't tell you is every time we have a Commission meeting and we go out to dinner, we have to pass the check around to see who can figure it out. We almost wound up getting locked up last night because we shorted the folks about $15 apiece. The person who really did a lot of work because sometimes I couldn't come to the working group is -- he was my commander of my forensic science division and then he left. He deserted us and went to Coreur d'Alane, Idado. His name is now Chief Tom Cronin from Coreur d'Alane, Idaho Police Department. One of the things and then we'll move on because today is Friday, and if you have ever been to Washington on D.C. on a Friday when the weather is coming in, you all might be here this time tomorrow. I'm going to get mine done so we can get out of here. We owe a round of applause really to the NIJ staff, to people like Robin, to Dr. Lisa Forman, to Chris. This is you guys' first time here, but we have been coming to this for almost three years, and they do a tremendous job I'm telling you, and we really owe them a round of applause for thejob that they've done. They gave me a speech to read, and I'm not going to read it. I have been a policeman for 32 years, and I figure when I get in front of policemen, I don't have to read a speech. I'm going to tell you a couple of things, and then I'm going to sit my butt down because there is no way in the world I can compete with these prosecutors. I'm not supposed to call them lawyers. I'm supposed to call them prosecutors. How many of you out here are married? Got a significant other? Well, I guess I'm beating a horse, but one of the things that I'm getting ready to say is that as chiefs, as superintendents, as commissioners, as prosecutors, state's attorneys, district attorneys, in the very near future I believe that we're getting ready to get our butts kicked, our butts really kicked. Kathryn Turman that's on the Commission who represents the victims, we've had a long conversation about this. You heard them talk about the 180,000 sexual assault kits that are sitting somewhere on a shelf in a storeroom, and we as an organization, not only police, prosecutors, and the lab have an unfunded mandate. We aren't testing nonsuspected criminal sexual assault kits. I've got a daughter that's 22 years old and I've got four sisters. I used to have five. If one of these ladies was the victim of a criminal sexual assault in the City of Chicago and not even being the superintendent I found out that we went out and the people in the hospital took it and we take it and put it on a shelf, I would be outraged. I would be incensed. We as law enforcement personnel, it used to be we want to become a profession. Now we are a profession. Now we're professionals. Don't forget the victims, and somewhere down the line we're forgetting the victims. Somehow or another we have to respond to the lobbyists, to the politicians, to our mayors, to our city councilmen and tell them you've got to find us some money. They can find money for anything and everything else; find us some money for this. It's good that crime has gone down for seven, almost eight years in a row, but we've got victims out there that we really aren't addressing their needs. They need some closure, too. Yes, we talk about a few success stories up here, but there are a lot more success stories that are sitting on those shelves in those evidence recovered crime labs and those sections. Our first responders, we've got to get them this information, and we've got to go back and let them know that this is a hell of a tool that we've got when it comes down to DNA. I guess with the pamphlet and with the CD ROM, it's not everything, but it's a beginning. It's something that we have that we didn't have two, three years ago. We as managers and as leaders and as chiefs and commissioners and superintendents, it's up to us. The saying that I have is when police officers -- and I know police officers; they're going to make legitimate, honest mistakes. When they make legitimate, honest mistakes, it's up to us to get them training, supervision, counseling, direction, and at times discipline, but, on the other hand, if they get out there and they willfully and they intentionally get involved in inappropriate activity by not doing their job the way they're supposed to, we're supposed to come after them. We have to teach and train and educate our folks when it comes down to what DNA is about. It was strange sitting there on that Commission and listening to all the different scientists and the lab technicians and the lab directors, and especially the lawyers, especially when Barry and Darryl Sanders would get into it, and sometimes I would go there after the lawyers and the scientists got through speaking and we would go out to dinner and I'm looking out in space and saying, hell, all that went by me today because I'm just a regular old street policeman, but then as we got into it, come to find out that this is a tool. This is a tool that we can use, and it shouldn't just rest with us folks here in this room. You've got to get it back and you've got to go to roll call and let your folks know about it. We've got to address this issue now, immediately, and we have to be proactive. The last thing is unfunded mandates, and you know what I'm talking about, your mayors, your city councilmen, your state senators, and your state legislatures, the sun will come out and the first thing is the police can do it. They give you no funding whatsoever. Well, I don't take unfunded mandates and I let them know. You are looking at an individual that come August 11 will be 57 years old. I spent 13 months in Vietnam, survived colon cancer, was shot on this job in 1975. I've got over 30 years on the job, so I can leave when I get good and ready. So I'll tell you I do not accept unfunded mandates, and one of the unfunded mandates is one of the reasons that when they said bring three people here with you and make it not just everybody from your respective area, the first person I reached out to was the Illinois State Police Director, Sam Nolen, because we go to him for our lab work. He handles our lab work. I went to Tom Epach, who is my chief of criminal prosecution over at the State's Attorney's Office, and then I called Richard Pennington down in New Orleans and said Richard, you belong to the major city chiefs. You have been there longer than I have. We need to be represented at this function, at this summit. So I guess in essence what I'm saying is don't just leave here with a number of pamphlets and books that they gave us. Go back to your respective agencies and try and educate and try and teach these young folks because this is the smartest crop of young police officers I have ever seen. All we have to do is just teach them and train them, and we'll be on the right foot and we can move ahead. That's enough, and I'm glad I didn't read this speech they gave me to bring all this way. The first person I want to bring up to you is a person that's from Austin, Texas, Clay Strange. Clay is an Assistant District Attorney down there. We have had a lot of conversations during these almost three years that this Commission has been in being, and he's doing some great things down in Austin. I'll let him tell you about it because I'm not going to stand up here and read his bio or anything like that. You've heard enough about that. Clay, why don't you come up and give the people a taste of what is going on down in Austin.
MR. STRANGE: When Chris Asplen asked me to make a presentation here this morning, he mentioned who else would be making a presentation here this morning, and that didn't give me a great deal of comfort. A couple of weeks ago I went on a weekend trip with my son for his 15th birthday hiking and told him I was a little bit nervous about this presentation. He said, "Well,let's talk about it. Who else is speaking?" I said, "Well, the Attorney General of the United States." I said, "Gee, Jeff, I guess maybe I could try to be as eloquent as she." He said, "No, Dad. I don't think you're going to get that done." I told him that Jim Wooley was going to be speaking right before me, and I told him a little bit about Jim Wooley, and he didn't seem to think that I was going to be as amusing and interesting as Jim Wooley either. I told him about Norm Gahn, who I think probably knows as much about DNA and is as innovative in DNA as any lawyer I know, and Jeff didn't think that I could get that done either. Now, the superintendent not only brings Tom in, who is probably going to outdo me, but he also gives a really terrific speech about why DNA is so important. It is an honor to be here today. It's an honor to be a member of the crime scene working group for the National Commission. I seriously did decide that I would talk just briefly about why I like DNA. I have been involved in it since 1993. I think one of the things that I bring to the table here today is that I have had a fairly varied exposure to the facets, many facets of DNA. There is no question but of those facets the thing that is best for me and, quite frankly, the most fun is working with the various people who have a part in this process because, quite frankly, it is a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun to solve crimes and to successfully prosecute crimes using DNA. One of the speakers earlier talked about how valuable it is to victims of crime to know that there is DNA. There is nothing more difficult I don't think than sending a witness to the stand, to the witness stand particularly in a sexual assault case where it's one on one; it's a swearing match, and after all the humiliation that generally the female victim has gone through to have to tell her that she is just going to have to go up there and be believed more than the suspect. Equally I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to tell that same victim that she will not be going up there alone; that rather there is also going to be a forensic scientist that's going to be going with her on that stand and talk about not just evidence, but what I believe is the truth, and that's what DNA does so well. It's the truth. When properly collected, when properly analyzed, it's the truth. In 1985 in Austin, Texas, in downtown a secretary in a law firm was abducted, kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Her body was dumped. As you can imagine, it decomposed a little bit. There were very few suspects in this case, only one real suspect of any magnitude, any real connection. That suspect was an ex-con. That suspect had come into the law office that this woman worked in and asked directions and had been a little bit inappropriate with this woman, and this had been witnessed. The ex-con had been seeing his lawyer in a different office there in the same complex, and, lastly, he was seen outside the office building presumably about the time she disappeared. Accordingly, this guy was the suspect. So what about forensic science? What about forensic evidence? What can we find that might help in this situation? Remember it's 1985. Serology for one reason or another was not successful. There weren't any fingerprints. The perpetrator didn't leave anything behind that had might link the crime to him. So it was determined that theresimply wasn't enough evidence to charge this suspect. I'm not naming names because this is still a pending case. Well, the police, of course, a young homicide detective named David Parkinson who I will name because he should be named interviewed this guy and interviewed him many times. Parkinson knew that he had the guy, but the guy was pretty clever. He had been through the system, and he knew how the confession game was played. Over the next year or two they sort of toyed with each other. Well, in 1989 RFLP came along, and there was some seminal fluid left behind at the scene, albeit a small amount and what was left was somewhat degraded. That seminal fluid was sent to the FBI for testing compared to the suspect, and as those of you who remember those days, it won't surprise you there was no result. The reason for that, of course, is RFLP required a fair amount of reasonably pristine DNA in order for an analysis to be done. So no help. The case continues. Parkinson keeps contact with this guy, but more important the guy keeps contact with Parkinson. The guy was enjoying himself a good deal. He would call Parkinson at home and play the little game of well, I didn't do it, but the guy that did do it probably did such and such. I imagine you have been exposed to that. It's sickening, but the guy enjoyed it. The nice thing, though, is it kept Parkinson's attention on the case. In 1993 when PCR became fairly widely available in Texas, Parkinson submitted that evidence to the Texas lab for PCR analysis. This time DQ alpha comes up, but unfortunately the guy had a couple of alleles that were fairly frequent, and I think it lowered the possibilities to like one in three or one in four, which given the sparsity of the evidence wasn't good enough. So other PCR techniques that were available at that time were tried with no result. Again this relationship between Parkinson and the suspect continued, and along comes STRs. The STRs, as you know, are the best that we have so far. STR analysis was done on the seminal fluid, and this time it was successful, and this time the numbers were satisfactory to get a probable cause affidavit and indict this man for capital murder. At that time it came to our office. At that time we looked at this case and unfortunately what numbers are now available, about one in 7,000. Because of the passage of time most of the witnesses about whom I just spoke about placing him in the building and that sort of thing are dead. So it becomes incredibly important at that point that our numbers improve from 1 in 7,000 or 1 in 10,000. I can't remember the exact number, but fairly low. My point is the report that we had gotten from the Texas Department of Public Safety left the impression -- the analyst that issued that report didn't really mean to leave that impression, but she left it nonetheless that this was as good as could be done, 1 in 10,000. The police officer and I meet with this analyst, and, quite frankly, because of the experience that I have had with DNA and in no small part because of the experience that I have had with the Future of DNA Commission, I said what had been done in this case was a nine probe or nine lociSTR profiler plus, 9 loci. So I said why don't we try cofiler, which raises it up to 13. Maybe we will get lucky and have another because she explained to me that the reason the result was so poor was because of the degraded DNA, and during the amplification process some of these STRs, some of these short tandem repeats don't amplify very well because they're a little bit too long and the ends fall off and all of this stuff I don't understand. So I said why don't we try some others? Well, that's not validated yet. So I said, why don't we take it to a lab where it is validated? Now, we did that. To make a long story short, we did that. We took it to another lab that used an entirely different set -- not an entirely different set, but additional STR loci, three of which came up and took our numbers up to in excess of a million, well in excess of million, enough so that we are now seeking the death penalty in that case. I tell this story because I think it's a very good illustration of the fact that the various people that are involved in this process unfortunately tend to have a fairly small piece of the puzzle in front of them. Generally speaking I think you're going to find that the criminalist that comes to the scene, the crime scene technician that comes to that scene, the first responding officer is going to have certain things that he or she is supposed to do, and it boils down generally to don't mess up the crime scene and make sure that nobody else does. The crime scene technician is going to have a relatively limited role. He or she is going to know what to look for. The detective that is going to come to that scene is going to have some knowledge of DNA, but probably not as much as he or she should have, although we're hoping that that will improve. The DNA lab supervisor that the stuff is submitted to is going to have some idea about this case, but not an awful lot. They are overworked beyond belief. The analyst to whom this case ultimately gets sent is extremely overworked, and unfortunately many times has to work in almost an assembly line fashion: Take this, analyze it, compare it to this, give a result, send out a report, next case. It's not quite that bad, but it's pretty bad. Finally, the prosecutor enters that case, and many times the prosecutor isn't going to know what was at that crime scene unless he or she is very diligent and really gets into the portions of the police report that may not necessarily make it to the prosecutor's office, evidence that was at the crime scene that wasn't considered important at the time. The point is that if these various players are brought together, a better product has always been had in my experience. Obviously you don't always need to do this. In those cases where you've got an eyewitness to the sexual assault, you're doing the DNA testing only because if you don't, the defense is going to want to know why didn't you. You don't need to do that. Most of the time you're not going to need to do that when you've got a witness to the case, but when you have a circumstantial evidence homicide, a circumstantial evidence aggravated sexual assault -- and as we'll see in a minute there are those for sure -- or in those instances where your eyewitness testimony is not that terribly great. I've never met a prosecutor that was bored by having too much evidence in a case. The more the better. In those instances where you really need DNA these are the kinds of situations that I'm talking about. You as a prosecutor, you as a police officer need to go to that lab. When the first result that you get from that lab gives you a result, okay, but, quite frankly, that result is not goodenough or maybe you don't even know whether it's good enough, that's one of the things that needs to be discussed. It has been my experience time and time again that when all of those parties go to that lab and meet with that analyst and maybe with the lab supervisor and tell them about this case, it takes that lab analyst from the realm of a person essentially doing piecework into a person that now has an interest in the particulars of your case. Many times the analyst is not going to know that it's a death penalty capital murder case or they are not going to know that there is an incredible sparsity of other evidence in the case and just how important these numbers may be. Quite frankly, in many cases 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 3,000 power of discrimination is fine. It's this guy or it could be 1 in 3,000 other people, but coupled with the eyewitness testimony that's pretty good. He or she may not know that this is a case in which the numbers couldn't just simply be more important. What happens from that is other techniques, other ideas, other procedures, other items can be talked about. Equally as a part of that process every participant in that meeting comes away smarter with regard to DNA. The police officer comes away from there knowing what it is generally that DNA can and cannot do. He or she comes away from there realizing why it is that the prosecutor doesn't think that the original number was correct. The analyst comes away from there not only with having met these people, but understanding a little better about what is going on. The prosecutor comes away from there knowing other things about the case that he or she may not have known as well as learning about DNA. When I do these things, I try to take along not just the police officer, but the actual prosecutor that may be handling the case if it's not me. It is very much an educational process. There is no question then when I taught DNA and most of the rest of us that have tried to do that, when we go teach DNA to people that are attending a continuing legal education seminar and they're there because they're trying to get their CLE hours and, frankly, they would rather be playing golf, your chances of teaching that person DNA are just about nil. On the other hand, if the police officer is in a situation where this may be a DNA case, but he or she has got another DNA case that's either for sure coming down the line or probably coming down the line very soon or in the case of the prosecutor is going to have to prosecute this particular case in the next two or three months or next week or so, it's that old hanging thing. It focuses the attention quite well and you can learn a tremendous amount about DNA, and that analyst is very much the person that can teach that. I believe it's extremely important -- and, by the way, I meant to say when I began that if I am talking down to any of you, I'm sorry, but every time I make a presentation on this stuff and the evaluations come back, there is always somebody that says that was way too simple. Talk about stuff that's more complicated. There is always somebody that says that was way over my head. Don't waste my time with this stuff. I don't understand it. You've got to be more rudimentary. What can I say? The fact is that some of you may have DNA programs that are up and running so well that I aminsulting you when I say these things, but my experience is that most of you don't. I know we don't in Texas. These things that I'm talking about occur all the time. I think it's very important at your jurisdiction that you have someone at the police level, someone at the prosecutor level that has a good understanding of DNA, has a good understanding that DNA is not a stagnant thing. Norm is going to talk here in a minute about the differences between the way it was when he started and the way it is now. It is very much an evolving process, and, quite frankly, one that has not stopped by any means. It will continue to evolve. I want to tell you just briefly about another case that I think has some interest. In Waco, Texas, just up the road from Austin, there was a woman who was attacked in her apartment at night. She didn't see the attacker. The attacker was dressed in black. He had on a mask. He had on gloves. He manages to get behind her in such a way that she never really sees his physique particularly. He has kind of a harness ligature with him. He manages to get that around her neck. He manages to get behind her so that she can't see him and is in the process of attempting to rape her using some other kind of ligature that he had brought with him. She kept telling him that he cannot do this because she has friends that are coming soon, and he unfortunately does not believe that. It turns out she was right. These people come. They see that something is happening in there. They call the police. Actually the police officer was right down the street oddly enough. The police chase the guy, they catch him, and it's great. They were talking about this at the Waco Police Department the next morning when a Texas ranger who is from Austin, works the Austin area, but also works some of the Waco area happens to be in the sex crimes area at the Waco Police Department. They say we caught one of your Austin guys last night. Really? So they tell him about the case a little bit. The Texas ranger goes back to Austin to sex crimes and says they caught a caught a guy up in Waco doing the following thing, and he describes it. Does that sound similar to anything that might have happened here? The ranger thought that he had heard about a similar assault. The victim was a Baylor University coed in Waco. He thought he had heard about a similar assault in Austin on a University of Texas coed, a similar first floor apartment, some indication that the person might have been in there before. Again, to make a long story short, it turned out that there was such a person. The DNA that was taken from the suspect in that case was compared to -- unfortunately, I forgot to mention one thing. This guy had apparently been to crime scene school. He had on his mask. He had on his gloves. He used a condom. He tried to leave that crime scene as pristine as he could. In the first case when it was initially investigated in Austin, it was thought that he had done a pretty good job. Fortunately, Clay had been to the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence crime scene and had heard about the potential for getting DNA off of ligature and had gone back and given a little speech to the Austin Police Department sex crimes about you might check ligature. So they had done that. They had swabbed the phone cord that the guy had used for ligature. It turns out that probably the phone cord doesn't leave much behind in the way -- the idea with ligature is you're pulling it taut like that. It doesn't work all that great with a phone cord, but apparently the guy with his little apparatus with the harness around the neck and the various things he was trying to do had to hold one end of the cord with his mouth, and so he left his spit on the cord. Additionally, as he completes the process of sexually assaulting this woman with his mask on he kisses her on the neck. The crime scene technician on top of things brings that to the attention of the same nurse. They swab her neck, and they give the ligature to the DPS lab. Well, much like in the case I talked about earlier, there were some problems with this DNA. Some of the loci didn't amplify, but some numbers were gotten and numbers good enough to give us a pretty good idea that it's the same guy. We have a similar kind of meeting. We're going to do other kinds of testing on her neck. She had her DNA, of course, she had her boyfriend's DNA on her neck a little bit, and she had the guy on her neck. But a mixed sample kind of thing and similar amounts makes it kind of hard, so we're thinking about doing Y chromosome, which you may have heard about, which hones in only on the guy and is very helpful in these kinds of cases of mixtures of the woman and of the man. There are all kinds of things we're going to do. But we have this meeting, and this time in particular the Texas Department of Public Safety analyst gets tremendously interested in this case. The Waco police come. The DA's investigator from Waco comes. The Austin police officer that's extremely good is there. We get this analyst way interested in this case. Well, the upshot in this case is we don't have to do all that stuff because the gloves and the ski mask that were recovered in Waco have our Austin victim on there. So there you go. It's not always the new improved technology. Sometimes the thought process itself can yield tremendous results. The upshot of that I believe is that when you get a result that's not good enough, don't give up. Don't give up, and if for no other reason than I believe you've seen here so far today that DNA makes advances every day. If you have a murder case that can't be solved right now, you might solve it in a few years. If you have got a sexual assault case that, as Norm is going to talk about, you might solve in the future, you might want to try to stop your statute if you've got one. I'll just close by saying that in 1995 when I came to the American Prosecutor Research Institute as the DNA director, it was generally thought by Dr. Rowe and by others that by now, by about 2000, that DNA would be so widely accepted, would be so routine, would be so easy that it would be like ballistics. It would be like fingerprints. There would be no need to really specialize train police, no need to really specialize train prosecutors, that this would just be something that would sort of blend into the general forensic sciences. Well, in 1996 I gave a presentation to an NIJ conference wherein I said that we don't ever haveconferences about ballistics. We don't ever have conferences about fingerprints, or if we do, they're attended by fingerprint people. DNA is different. Number one, it's little bitty and it's awfully hard for people like me with my B plus in high school biology to understand. Additionally, though, as has been pointed out very well by Jim, it brings to the table things that have never been brought. It doesn't just identify you. It tells things about you. It is something that I believe is without question the most exciting development in criminal justice maybe forever.
MR. HILLARD: Next I'm going to bring Norm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to talk to you about a very innovative program that he has going on up there. One thing you've got to remember is this is about partnerships. It's about not only the first responders doing their job, but it's about the detectives and the investigators getting together with the prosecutors and getting together with those technicians and those people from the lab and trying to decide on which way and how should a case be investigated and what you need to move toward to the next step. Norm?
MR. GAHN: Thank you, Chief. When Chris called me a few months ago and asked me to come speak to some of the chiefs of police, I was very excited about it, but I was wondering what could I share with you besides what I believe are some of the innovative things we're doing in Milwaukee County. I just finished a jury trial a couple of months ago. I just finished it, and it involved utilizing RFLP evidence as well as PCR evidence in a sexual assault case. Ten years prior to that case I tried my first case involving RFLP and PCR in Milwaukee County, and I thought it might be interesting to briefly go through these two cases for you, tell you a little bit about them, and see how this technology itself has changed in ten years and how it has grown and where we have come in the ten-year process. So bear with me for just a few minutes, and then we'll get into some of the programs we have at the sexual assault unit in Milwaukee County. Back in 1998 we had an individual who was murdering elderly women in their homes. They had no idea who it was. They were coming about every week. These were burglaries, and this is the prosecutor's dream called other acts evidence that you love to bring in at trial. But these burglaries that were in the areas of these homicides, they were almost exactly the same type of entry, the same type of disheveling the home. They were just exact cases, and we are able to get all of those in. In any event, we have these three women who were murdered and had no idea who the perpetrator was. This is the neck injuries, external neck injuries of one of the victims. They died of asphyxiation. Here is the second victim, neck injuries, and the third victim. We had some verypowerful medical examiner testimony. We had three medical examiners look at all the autopsy protocols, and it was the opinion of the three medical examiners that one person was responsible for all three homicides based upon the injuries, the extent. Basically there was a complete avulsion of the voice box in all of the victims. They believed it was probably stomping on the necks of these victims. But it was so unique, the internal and external injuries, that it was their opinion that one person was responsible for the three homicides. Again, we had no suspects at all in any of these cases; however, at one of the homicide scenes the detective saw this toy donkey sitting on the couch, and when one of the family members got to the house, they said that toy donkey doesn't belong there. The toy donkey actually belonged on a chair right where the body of one of victims was found. When the detective picked up the toy donkey and turned it over, he observed these very fresh blood smears on the toy donkey. That toy donkey was taken immediately to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory just to check to see if the blood on the donkey was foreign to the victim. This is Mrs. Breshnahan, and this is the blood on the toy donkey. You can see that it was foreign blood. We were quite excited about that, the fact that we knew we had foreign blood, and since it was fresh, in all likelihood this is the assailant. We felt that if we could find the assailant and do enough genetic workup just for one of the victims, that based upon the medical examiner testimony we could get a conviction for all of the homicides when we coupled the medical examiner testimony. A number of months later Mr. Robert Wirth was caught. He had robbed a taxicab driver. The taxicab driver got into a fight with him and Robert Wirth had a gun, and the taxicab driver fought him and got the gun away from him. When the police ran a check on that gun, they found out that the gun was stolen from a residence next door to one of the victims. So we started to focus on Mr. Robert Wirth, and after a John Doe proceeding we got permission to get his blood, and we took that immediately out to the crime lab. You can see Robert Wirth matched the blood on the toy donkey. Again, it sends a shiver down my spine when I look at these ABO enzyme markers today, but I recall doing so many trials. Before the advent of DNA this is what we used, and the numbers were 1 in 500, 1 in 600. If we had 1 in 1,000, we thought it was a terrific case and we really had wonderful evidence. So besides those markers we did send it out to Ed Blake in California. At that time back in '89 and '90 there was one PCR marker and DQ alpha, and Robert Wirth matched the blood on the toy donkey right there. Again, that was the only PCR marker available at that time. We also then went to Sonar Diagnostics, but before I show you that here are the numbers at that time. We went up to Minneapolis, too, the Memorial Blood Center, and did gamma markers and cappa markers. But with these ABO enzymes the number was 1 in 4,565. When we added in the DQ alpha, the number was I believe 1 in 55,000 with the DQ alpha, again, a comfortable number, but I don't know if that would have been a number one for proof beyond a reasonable doubt for a jury since that was the only evidence that we had. So we did additional testing. Sonar Diagnostics did a great job for us. After talking to them -- again, everyone was going through their growing pains back then, but here are the markers for Mr. Robert Wirth and here is the toy donkey marker and here is the match. We felt with the number 1 in 800,000 one would find the combination of all these genetic markers. We went to trial. It was a lengthy trial. It was a six-week sequestered jury trial, and they eventually convicted Mr. Wirth largely because of the DNA evidence, but again there was one marker. There were four RFLP markers, one PCR, and the most conservative number was 1 in 800,000. Two months ago I tried a sexual assault case that happened on April 21 of 1997, and our victim, Miranda, she was walking down the street when two individuals were following her. She crossed over to the phone booth to call the police, but they ran up to her, grabbed her at gun point, and dragged her to this little walkway. They dragged her down the walkway and dragged her to the back alley here. Back here she was sexually assaulted. One of the individuals assaulted her from behind. He also would take the gun barrel and shove that up her vagina and tell he was going to kill her if she didn't perform oral sex on the other person who was in front of her. The person behind her then also did penis to vagina sexual intercourse from behind, and he ejaculated on the cement right here at No. 3. The person in front of her ejaculated in her mouth, and after they fled the crime scene Miranda ran by the dumpster and spit the semen out right here. She then ran up to the local hospital and called the police. The police came and brought her back to the scene, and they gathered up these samples and sent those out to the crime lab. This was our first cold hit in Milwaukee County. April 2l was the incident with Miranda, and it wasn't until over a year later that the profiles -- I'm sorry -- a few months later the profiles were entered into our case index. We were just starting our case index in about June of '97. It wasn't until June of '98 that we really got our convicted offender data bank going. We had about 4,000 samples in our convicted offender. Finally this was on Shawn Riley. Shawn Riley was the person who was behind Miranda, and he ejaculated on the cement. He wouldn't tell us who his coactor was, the one who ejaculated in her mouth and the semen that Miranda spit out, but the police through terrific investigation looked at all of his friends and did some elimination samples. He came to me, and we issued a warrant for the arrest of Darryl McDowell. We put the warrant out. The police picked him up in March of '99, took his buccal swabs, and then in April of '99 the semen that was spit out by Miranda matched Mr. McDowell. That's the case I went to trial on just a couple months ago. Again, our first cold hit was for Shawn Riley, and obviously that investigation then led to Mr. Darryl McDowell. This is what I showed to the jury. You probably can't see this in the back, but it was interesting going to trial and how far we have come in ten years is that here was the semen on the corner and here is Darryl McDowell's genetic profile, and it matches perfectly, but mixed in with the semen was another profile, and that profile matched Miranda perfectly, and that was her epithelial cells fromthe side of her cheeks when she spit out the semen. That's pretty powerful stuff to put in front of a jury. We also had six RFLP markers. It was so powerful that the defendant took the stand and stated that now he finally remembered what happened that day. He was out there in that back alley with his girlfriend and that he ejaculated out there, and Miranda must have somehow just walked down into the alley and happened to spit into it. So that was the defense in the case. He was convicted and he's facing a ton of years. Again, look at where we've come, 1 in 9.45 quintillion, quite a difference from the days of 1 in 800,000. But powerful stuff to put in front of the jury. One thing also that happened during this jury selection -- I remember ten years ago when I tried the case, the Robert Wirth case, I asked the jurors how many were familiar with forensic DNA testing. I think one hand went up. Now two months ago every hand went up of the panel of jurors and every one of the jurors had a favorable impression of DNA. They all knew about it exonerating people who have been convicted of crimes, but there were nine people on that jury panel who felt that DNA alone is proof beyond a reasonable doubt and they could not be moved from that position by the defense attorney. That's quite a difference from ten years ago when I had one person raise their hand, and that person I asked what do you know about DNA, and he said yes, it had something to do with hunting. I let that go because I was going to strike the guy anyway. Then after I was done with my voir dire I turned to the detective. I said what he is talking about hunting? He thinks you're talking about the DNR, the Department of Natural Resources. But we have just come such a long, long way in the ten years that we have been doing these trials with the DNA. What I want to talk to you about now is what we have done with the sexual assault unit in Milwaukee County. The detectives over at the City of Milwaukee Police Department, we have a goal, and this goal was set up a couple of years ago. We're going to get all of our old unsolved cases entered into the case index, all our nonsuspect cases immediately taken to the crime lab. In other words, if there was a sexual assault in Milwaukee County last night, the detective either last night or this morning is at the sexual assault treatment center getting the evidence from the nurse, taking it immediately to the crime lab, and hopefully the crime lab would start working that case, that unknown case, and getting it into the case index immediately. We're kind of close to this believe it or not, but we use an awful lot of discretion. The detectives use an awful lot of discretion in what they're taking out and asking the crime lab because I know from my experiences that if we were to just tell all the police that we've got these data banks and we can put these old cases in, the police would be more than happy to pack up every bit of evidence and take it out to the crime lab, and the crime isn't going to say give us more work; we don't have enough to do. If you get together and you talk about this stuff, you come to an agreement. You kind of triage these cases and get into the data bank those cases that you think have a very high solvability rate.This is what the detectives in Milwaukee County do. They work on cases which have a high solvability rate. These are these cases, especially, these nonsuspect cases -- I mean the old unsolved cases because we find, as you've heard, it is unacceptable to us that we are going to have these women swabbed at the sexual assault treatment center and put them in a freezer. That's not acceptable, and we will not do that. Those are going to be taken out and worked and we're going to work them immediately. But we still had all these old unsolved cases as we got going with our data bank. This I just want to tell you. When the police went through -- I think the City of Milwaukee police detectives went through about 6,000 police inventories, probably over 2,000 cases, and they had this criteria they set up. First of all, is the victim still available? Is the victim around? What is the solvability of this case? They really took a real hard look at them, and they were looking for any serial links and basically looking for stranger dragged off the street sexual assaults. In June of 1998 was when our Wisconsin data bank got going. It had 4,000 convicted offenders in it, and from June of '98 until December of '98 when the police just prior to this were really going through all the cases, all the old cases going back to 1992 and '93, immediately we had eight hits against the convicted offender data bank from June of '98 to December of 1998. I think you have to realize you can't take every single case that you have out to the crime lab, unsolved case, and feel it's going to be worked. It can't be done. So you've got to look at these cases and look at them hard. Where we started, and I thought it was just the best place to start, was just asking the police detective using your collective institutional knowledge go back in your mind three or four years ago. What are the most egregious cases, and that's what they did. That's where they started: Gosh, remember her at the beauty salon back in 1993? Those are the ones they went back, dug them out, and took them back to the crime lab. That's a good place to start and then get some orderly way of looking at your cases. As I said, the detectives in Milwaukee have done a terrific job in doing that. I'm not going to go into all of these issues. We've had so many issues, the person would have been a juvenile had you gotten the hit immediately and taken the swabs and everything examined. I'll talk about statute of limitations in a minute. ABO enzyme exclusions. Many times you're going to have cases that they did ABO enzyme work on it. Take a look at those. See if anyone is excluded. Take a look at who the suspects are. Victim impact, you've heard enough about that. All of the victims that we've had are just excited about the fact that we've caught the individual. Confession, we found that going to the prison once you get a kit out of the convicted offender data bank, instead of bringing the prisoner to us in Milwaukee County, they will get into the squad car and head to the prison with the report, and generally they've got a confession every time they've done that, going out to the prison and catching the guy cold. Also have that crime lab report with you stating that here is the match. We also still do a line-up for the victim. We have great success four or five years later of the victim picking out the individual. You have inthe handouts court orders for blood samples, search warrants for blood samples, and what I think is probable cause for a criminal complaint based upon a cold hit. That's in the folders that you have that may be helpful to you. As we were going through, as the police were going through all the old cases and getting these to the crime lab we got caught up a little bit. They brought me a case, and I issued it eight hours before the statute of limitations expired. It was in 1998 that I issued it, and, as I said, it was eight hours before the statute. As time went on, as weeks went on we knew that there were so many cases that we have where we had foreign profiles from vaginal swabs, but the statute was expiring, and we were just very frustrated on what could we do for these victims. Is there any way we could still breathe life into this case and keep it going? What I want to tell you about is now we have our statute of limitations and six years for a felony and that was for sexual assaults. Although everyone says I did something innovative here with issuing some of the John Doe warrants, I didn't. Every time I go talk I say I did not do anything innovative. This was based upon the police detectives who were at a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a couple of years ago. In Milwaukee County we have a detective by the name of Lori Galioni. She's just terrific. She's like a pit bull, and I say that with warmth and affection where she latches on to you as a prosecutor and won't let go until you do what she wants. But she's just terrific. She met with other detectives from Albuquerque and I think some detectives in Kansas, and they talked about issuing these cases on genetic codes. She came back to me and just hounded me: Come on, let's do it if you think DNA is so great while these cases start to expire. Let's just issue the warrants for the arrests based upon the genetic code, that foreign profile that we have. I took a look at that and I looked at our statute on warrants, and this is basically what it says: You can state the name of the person to be arrested if known -- that's what would go on the warrant -- or if not known, designate the person to be arrested by any description by which the person to be arrested can be identified with reasonable certainty. Well, obviously when this was written, our statute, this was, you know, hoping that the cop on the street can identify the person by those physical characteristics. You would put in their tattoo on the forehead, missing left arm, or whatever it is. Would this statute be robust enough to encompass the genetic code of a person? It certainly does identify the person with reasonably certainty. I think it identifies a person beyond a reasonable doubt. So anyway, Lori kept, as I say, hounding me, so eventually I told her you find me a case. I want a stranger case, preferably a serial type case, and I would like about three genetic profiles on vaginal swabs or cervical swabs because the first case that does hit the courts I want it to be a stranger dragged off the street type serial offense when we do eventually pick up our Wisconsin Joe Doe. Sometimes I think I'll be on Opra someday because everybody talks about the Wisconsin John Doe. But this was the first case we did, and it was John Doe, unknown male with matchingdeoxyribonucleic acid profile. This was issued a week before the statute of limitations expired, and this was issued for a serial rapist. Since that time we have the New York Times -- we did this in September. A couple of months later the New York Times picked it up, and then it became cool. So we continued to do these in Milwaukee County, these felony warrants. Here is another one. This is for another RFLP case, and this is John Doe No. 5. We do them for the PCR markers, too. By the end of the year we should have about 20, 25 John Doe warrants out. I'm hoping that that ends someday because we have our 1999 assembly bill where we're trying to do away with the statute of limitations in Wisconsin, and that eventually I think will come. So that's what we're doing, and it's really kind of exciting, and the victims that we do call and say what we're doing is we can't make any promises, but we are going to try and keep your case alive. We're going to issue this warrant based on the genetic code, and they're very excited about it. In fact, I think it's something that many of the victims will say you mean you still care? You're still looking at it? I think it's a necessary message that you send to your community, that we're not going to forget these cases. We will pursue them, and we will use aggressively whatever technology we have available to us. As I say, I think it sends a very message to your community. Before I sit down I want to tell you about one other case. This is probably one of the most intriguing criminal defendants that I ever prosecuted, Mr. Anthony Turner. Mr. Is a serial rapist in Milwaukee County, and we had some really powerful evidence against him, but in one of the rapes he had a coactor with him and there was a partial DNA profile. We had a tremendous DNA from all the victims for Mr. Anthony Turner, and again here are the 13 core loci that we had, and Mr. Turner was found to be the source of the semen. On this particular sexual assault there was a coactor, and he would not give the coactor to us, but we did have a partial profile. Mr. Turner always maintained throughout the course of the proceedings that there is just no way that he could have done these; that there was somebody else in the City of Milwaukee who had his same genetic code, had the same 13 loci and had the same six RFLP. He maintained this all the way through just before sentencing, but after he was convicted and prior to sentencing Mr. Turner sends a letter to the crime analyst at our state crime lab and says listen, if you want to find out who the person is who was with me in the one rape, you will find out that that person also raped Samantha in March of '99. So he gave a sexual assault victim's name and location and put this all in the letter and said if you go and test the semen from that case, you will find out that it also matches those markers that you have for my coactor. Then I will tell you his name. Well, to humor him, when the crime lab called me, I said okay, go ahead and do it, and I asked the police detective, Lori, take that out to the crime lab and test that semen on Samantha. Well, they tested it on Samantha, who reported the rape, and it doesn't match any of those markers of this coactor, but it matches Anthony Turner perfectly. Of course, he has been in prison all this time and could not have done it, but that's, as he always claimed, his theory, that somebody else in Milwaukee has my genetic code. Then I said, Lori, go find Samantha for me. Well, she had fallen off the face of the earth, but eventually they found her in Almagety County Jail, which is up by Appleton in the Green Bay area. So Lori went up to see Samantha, and as soon as she walked in and asked her do you know what this is about, she says yes. Anyway Mr. Turner had mailed his semen from the jail to her, gave her $50 to rub it on her, and to report this rape. He had planned this so meticulously in thinking that we would be foolish enough to think there is someone else in Milwaukee with this code and you can go free, Mr. Turner. But this is a nice testimonial to the power of DNA evidence when the criminals are trying to use it to their advantage. These are things that you have to look for in the future and be very astute as investigators on the scene. I think you're going to see more of this. I think you're going to see crime scenes being contaminated in the future with other people's DNA, and there could be some very confusing crime scenes. But I have all the faith in the world, and if all of you are as talented as the sexual assault detectives that I have in Milwaukee County, then all your jurisdictions are equally luckily fortunate and we'll all thwart those attempts by the criminals. Thank you very much for your attention. MR. HILLARD: Real quick, police departments, police detectives are good at solving those heated cases. You know you are, and with DNA it will get even better. So that's just another reason why you need to get a partnership going with your prosecutors and with your lab technicians and with your different labs. I'll say it until I sit down. Don't forget the victims. Don't forget the V I C T I M S. Tom, come on up and tell us what they're doing up in Cooke County. Tom Epach, chief of criminal prosecution for the Cooke County State's Attorney's Office, a good friend of mine. Since Robin said I was the moderator, I got him to be a presenter. MR. EPACH: Thank you. My name is Tom Epach. I'm the chief criminal prosecutor from Chicago. I'm here to help you. I am honored to be here, but I'm very humbled to be introduced by one of the great law men in America today. Calling Terry Hillard an ordinary policeman like he called himself is like calling Walt Disney a cartoonist. It just isn't so. He's a lot more than that. This is a great opportunity to listen to what I consider a world series hall of fame all star group of experts talk about what helps victims, but there is one thing that's missing, and defense lawyers do it all the time and the talking heads on television do it all the time. They market their approach better than police do and better than prosecutors do, and so I think we have a duty to do those things and to market those things that we have talked about here for last couple of days. We need to show our fondness for the good work that's being done in this room by coming up with some certain slogans that will soon be appearing on bumper stickers across the country that shows that law enforcement is involved in the DNA game as well. We can have fun doing that. I know this is serious business, but one thing that I always like to talk about is there are only three jobs in the entire universe where you can protect people and have this much fun doing it, and that is you can be the police, you can be a prosecutor, or you can be a rodeo clown. Those are the only three options where you get a chance to protect people and have fun. So I thought we need some slogans for this group. I thought that we can start with if you spit, they can't acquit. Leave behind a double helix and your next date will be named Felix. A victim's hair on your socks and you're paroled in a box. One of the things that the superintendent asked me to speak about was the relationship that a prosecutor should have with his police department and that a police officer should have with his prosecutor or her prosecutor. Prosecution is a team sport. We are partners with the police. We stand shoulder to shoulder. We protect victims together. We protect them in the streets, we protect them in their homes, and we protect them in the courthouse. We are partners in every sense of the word. As you may have learned from watching the newspapers and television prosecutors across the country and especially in Chicago I suppose have joined the police as targets, and in this time of upheaval and of easy criticism when the whole world thinks that they know more than the people that actually do it for a living it's easy to criticize, but we have been there next to the police department in our jurisdiction as their partners and they have stood by us. Young assistants often come in and they talk about how the sky is falling on them and they don't appreciate the criticism, and basically my response is always the same. It's well, now you know how the police have felt for the last 40 years. Go back to work, and they do. We are all about the same thing. We are not here about money for labs or resources for analysts or loot for training. We're here to get these things for victims, not for job security, not for sport, not for the ability to run fast and jump high in public. It's for victims so that they can live better lives, so that innocent victims of crime after they come into our lives have benefitted from the work that we've done here and they've benefitted from being part of our lives. We see them at their worst moment in history. If we can't give them something that they can use to salvage their lives, then shame on us. That's basically what our mission is here. We talk a lot about the science and the technology and we tell war stories, as all law enforcement people do, but out there is a whole group of people that are depending upon us to get this right and get it right now and do it better and do it faster, and that's the people that we can never forget about. The simple message I think from the last two days is we must say this together and we have to say it louder. How do we partner up in a better way? Well, in Chicago it's really not a problem because Chicago has what is called the felony review system, so every felony case coming into the system has to be reviewed by a felony trial assistant or a felony review assistant. In the case of Chicago that's approximately 38,000 felonies a year, so that's 38,000 times that Terry's people and my people get together and put their heads together and solve a caper. But we do it a muchmore meaningful way as well. I'm proud of my relationship with the superintendent, and I think that my people get along with his people in an extraordinary fashion on even bigger projects than just the endless treadmill of crime that comes across our desks. Over the course of the last 18 months we were faced with the decision of whether to begin videotaping offender statements on homicides. We decided that this was something that we wanted to take a good look at, and we did that. The superintendent put a team of his top detectives together, we put a team of our top prosecutors together, and we went around the country and we talked to different jurisdictions that had tried it, that were doing it, that had historically had done it for a long, long time. We got the best of those programs, the worst of those programs. We talked to prosecutors. We talked to police in each of these jurisdictions, and we came back with an idea that well, if you build it, they will come, and we put together a system in our view and it has worked like a charm. In the last basically ten months since the program began we've taken over 200 homicide confessions on videotape. It's one of the great parts of the partnership with the Chicago Police Department. As I sat there, I haven't been part of any committee and I'm just here because I was nominated by the good graces of the superintendent in Chicago, and so I don't know a lot of people here, but what I find most interesting is not only the dedication of all the people here, but their knowledge about DNA, but then I sense that there are some in the police officers that are here, some sense that the public still doesn't get it and that everyone thinks that this is a very complicated thing. In listening to the doctor yesterday, Dr. Forman yesterday, DNA is a very simple thing, and I think that's a message that we need to take back to our communities as well, that it's not a magic bullet, but it's not rocket science. It's complicated, but it's simple. There were a couple of questions yesterday and the world has changed a lot since OJ, but there were a couple of mentions of OJ yesterday. Basically I think the public still sees it as well, DNA can be defeated in court. In my mind as a prosecutor, DNA is better than any eyewitness, and we deal with eyewitnesses and we're comfortable with eyewitnesses because we deal with them all the time. But DNA never shows up late. DNA never shows up hung over. DNA doesn't -- you don't have to send the police out early in the morning to find DNA because they're not where they're supposed to be. DNA doesn't have to be subpoenaed. DNA doesn't have to be put in witness protection quarters. DNA has perfect eyewitnesses. DNA doesn't depend upon lighting. DNA doesn't flip you when it finally gets on the stand and DNA doesn't have gang banger buddies that sit in the hard seats. So there are many advantages that we as prosecutors usually don't think about when we're dealing with DNA. So DNA has been I think a real boom to prosecutors. I think it has gotten complicated because of OJ. In Chicago we handle DNA rather simply and I believe correctly, and the evidence in the OJ case would have been presented in about two hours. The jury would have been out about half that time because the DNA would have been presented correctly and the argument would have been that in the official team photo of all the people living on the planetearth DNA excludes everyone except No. 32, and everyone in Chicago would have understood the value of that argument, and OJ would be well into his death penalty appeals. DNA is a tool that's used best if it's simply used. In Chicago and I'm sure in many other jurisdictions juries are changing, and you see that on television. In Chicago sometimes we get jury pools that look like the audience of the Jerry Springer show. As a matter of fact, Jerry Springer is filmed in Chicago, and on some days honest to God you swear that the bus went right from the television studio to 26th and California without any stops except maybe at the Cooke county jail to pick up a couple of add ons if they had a couple of seats, and so that is your jury pool. So when I train younger prosecutors, I teach a couple of things. When they're on trial -- and this is something that's good for old prosecutors and old police. In America in the year 2000 we are never winning. We may have the best evidence in the world, but we are never, ever winning, and that's for a couple of reasons. It's true 17% of America thinks Elvis is still alive, and those people are on your jury listening to this evidence. The other factor remains true; that is, if you take a look at the television shows, the top 50 ranked television shows for the highest viewers, ten of the top 50 shows are still episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies, and those are the people that are listening to this kind of evidence. There is another rule, a quick Cooke County rule and then we can go to lunch, and that is the Cooke County rule of evidence collection, and that is if you have 20 eyewitnesses, if you've got a videotape machine in the ceiling that's videotaping the entire crime, if you've got fingerprints, if you've got a video confession, if you've got a third party admission, if you've got the proceeds recovered, if you've got the offender's identification left on the counter, one thing is certain. You will find DNA; however, if you have a stranger danger case with no clues, no tips, no witnesses, no confession, and no proceeds, you can submit it, but you will find no DNA, and it's our obligation to change that. The superintendent asked me to speak about partnerships, and I remembered that when I heard Dr. Forman's talk because the relationship between prosecutors and the police should be as Dr. Forman described, those alphabet letters. You can't find one without the other. So when you see an A, a C, a G, and T, you see a policeman and you see a prosecutor, and that's the bond between the two. If there is not one there, you can do something or you should have something there where there is a mechanism that will trigger so that when the police officer is there, he has got the intellect of the prosecutor. When the prosecutor is there, he has got the intellect of the police officer there. This is as nature intended. My belief is that God is a prosecutor. He took a couple of weeks off in the last year, but God is a prosecutor, and this is as nature intended it. We make each other better. That is the nature of police officers and prosecutors. This is the food chain in the world of law enforcement. Better training begets better detectives, which begets better cases, which makes better trials, which makes better trial lawyers, which makes better verdicts, which makes better sentences, which makes better communities. That's the way it always will be. With this sharing of responsibilities and talents we can build these safer communities. Again, when Dr. Forman was talking, I thought if this is this theme as an outsider looking in at what has been said over the last two days here, if DNA is truly a building block of life, then DNA can also be a building block of saving those lives and protecting those lives. I think that is basically what we're doing here over the course of the last couple of days. The other reason that all of this is necessary is because the other side is doing it, too. Right now at this very moment everybody look at your watch. Someplace not far from here or wherever you choose, the government, the United States Government is paying for another group of people to sit around and talk, and they're eating free, too, but those people are called convicts. Whether they're at Stateville or whether they're at Sing-Sing or whatever your state institution is, there is a group of people that are supported by our tax dollars just like our salaries, and they're sitting around talking the same way we're talking and they're trying to figure this thing out as well. They're very good at it. They're out at the University of Crime getting an education just like we're here at Washington, D.C., getting an education. I was in one Area 1 at nighttime about a week ago, and an offender in custody, he said, you've got to know where your juices go. Where do you think he got that from? I'm sure it wasn't a seminar that was given here. It must have been at some other local facility where he picked up that ditty. So anyway we have to be a team. Prosecutors in rebuttal always argue about if it's an accountability case, we describe the team as whatever the defendant's name is. We're the same way. We are accountable for each other's behavior in this endeavor. It is our responsibility to aid and abet each other in this endeavor, but we have to do so with honesty, with integrity, with professionalism, with a great amount of sophisticated thought, with a great amount of expertise, and with devotion to the highest standards of justice and fair play. I always think that I'm the luckiest man in the world because every day I get up and get to go to work in what I consider a community of heroes. The people that I work with day in and day out are just magnificent human beings, and I consider myself the luckiest man in the world, and then I come here and I see more heroes. Thanks for having me here. I really appreciate it. MR. HILLARD: Chris, I think from our part of it that's about it. One of the things that I just want to tell you is we might be the second largest police department in the country with over 13,560 some odd police officers and another 27, 28 hundred civilian employees, but basically we've all got the same problems whether you're from a four-man department, a 200-man department, a 3,000-man department, Chicago, New York, LA, Houston, Austin, Atlanta. We've got the same problems as most of those small communities in the rural areas and some of them in the suburban areas when it comes down to violent crime. This DNA is a tremendous investigative tool, and we need to make sure and insure that our politicians, that our elected officials know about this. Go back and lobby them. You're not the Attorney General. You don't work for the U.S. Government like Chris and Robin. Most of us inhere have got pensions. You know what I'm talking about. So go back and lobby. Get some money for your labs so they can do this job for us. Thank you and God bless you. MR. ASPLEN: We have time for a few questions if there are any. We asked them to set lunch up a little bit early because I want to make sure we're able to start the luncheon presentation by Mr. Dovaston right on time. Trust me on this one. You really want to be ready to go so we can get a full hour's worth of Mr. Dovaston's discussion. He's going to talk to us about what they're doing in the United Kingdom, and I think it will be very interesting. So with that enjoy lunch. (Luncheon recess.)
| |||||||