The main suspect in the slaying of 11-year-old Ryan Harris might have been off the streets months before the girl’s death were it not for inconsistent procedures in the Chicago Police Department for submitting DNA samples for testing by the state’s crime lab.
Samples of semen, allegedly from Floyd Durr, found at the scene of two rapes of young girls in January were never submitted to the state’s DNA database, according to police sources, even though the 7-year-old database was specifically designed to identify suspects in crimes for which there are no leads and the only evidence is blood or other bodily fluids.
Only after another rape, of an 11-year-old in May, and after Harris’ slaying–in which Durr’s semen also was allegedly found at the scene–did police make the connection between Durr and the January rapes, a link made through the DNA database that could have put him in jail months earlier.
Durr is now charged with all three rapes and, according to police, has admitted that he performed a sexual act on Harris’ body, although he contends that he did not kill her.
Though the state lab says that any samples that are submitted ultimately are tested–after delays, in some cases–the decision to submit samples is left to the discretion of individual detectives on a case.
Neither Chicago police nor Illinois State Police will comment on why DNA from the January rapes was not tested against the database. But it is clear that had the genetic material been tested earlier, Durr might have been in jail before it ever occurred, and the May rape with which he has been charged might never have happened.
The gap raises serious questions about guidelines used by Chicago police to send forensic samples to the state lab for DNA testing.
Because of the inconsistent procedures, cases that could be pursued through DNA tests can grind to a halt. Moreover, once samples in cases for which there are no suspects reach the lab, they are often given low priority and delayed for months.
Although this approach may seem an inefficient use of the state’s multimillion-dollar offender database, federal officials say it is all too common, even as the FBI announced last week the launch of a nationwide system that will link genetic profiles of convicted felons from all 50 states.
“Generally, state and local crime labs only work cases in which they have a known suspect and have a court date,” said Dawn Herkenham, chief of the forensic science systems unit at the FBI. “Cases in which there is some biological evidence but no suspect get put to the end of the line and may not even be submitted.”
The irony that the police often wait until they have a suspect before taking advantage of the database is the major flaw in the procedure; those are precisely the kinds of cases for which the database was intended.
Both Chicago and state police have been under fire of late. Chicago police have been widely assailed for bringing charges against two young boys in the Ryan Harris case, while the state Forensic Science Center in Chicago has faced charges that technicians concealed evidence favorable to a defendant in a 1992 rape case that is currently being challenged.
But both departments say the need to put more pressing cases ahead of blind database searches often leads to some semen or blood samples being tested only after lengthy delays.
Under a state law passed in 1990, anyone convicted of a sex-related felony must give a blood sample to authorities before leaving prison. The samples, taken for crimes ranging from incest to aggravated sexual assault, yield DNA profiles that are converted into electronic form and entered into a database called the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.
The state crime lab prioritizes forensic work on the samples it receives: High-profile cases get tested first, followed by cases where there is a suspect or for which a court date is pending. Cases with no suspect have the lowest priority, according to Col. Teresa Kettelkamp, deputy director of the state Division of Forensic Services.
“The last thing we want,” Kettelkamp said, “is for an active case to be dismissed because they don’t have the lab work.”
Still, Kettelkamp said the state lab does DNA database searches for any rape case in which there is a DNA sample and no suspect. Although such cases carry low priority, the entire process should take no longer than four months once a sample is submitted, Kettelkamp said.
Thus, had evidence from the January rape cases been sent immediately to the state lab, Durr still might have been identified before the May rape.
Yet Chicago police leave it to detectives to request that samples be sent from the department’s lab to the state police lab for testing.
The process begins at a hospital when a so-called rape kit is done. A police evidence technician then sends the kit by internal mail to the department’s Forensic Services Division, its own crime lab.
Unless a detective asks that the sample be sent to the state lab for testing, it is kept with Chicago police for 30 days, when a list of all rape kits still in the lab is distributed to the detectives as a reminder, said police spokesman Pat Camden.
“For a comparison, there would have to be a request for it,” Camden said. “It’s not automatically sent to the crime lab for testing.”
If no request is made, the sample is moved to the evidence and property room for storage.
Although the rape of a child especially would seem to call for police to submit a sample, Kettelkamp defended the need for police to have a choice.
“If they gave us everything they collected on every crime in the city, the costliness would be prohibitive,” Kettelkamp said.
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Chicago police declined to comment on how those decisions are made.
The total cost of putting offender samples in CODIS is about $1 million a year, or $500 per sample, officials said. Forensic samples taken from crime scenes can be considerably more expensive to test.
Durr was never in the DNA database because he has not been convicted of a felony that falls under the state database law. His brother, Eddie Durr, was in the database, however. Eddie pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal assault for a 1986 rape and was imprisoned until August 1995.
The similarity between the brothers’ DNA ultimately led police to Floyd.
A semen stain discovered on underwear belonging to Ryan Harris led to the release in early September of two young boys whom police first suspected in the girl’s slaying. Police have said the state crime lab in Chicago ran DNA tests on the stain and checked it against the statewide database, which produced a close match with Eddie Durr’s DNA record.
That link made police believe the DNA belonged to a close relative of Eddie Durr’s. Investigators approached Floyd Durr, who had been arrested in late August for one of the January rapes on the basis of eyewitness identification. Durr voluntarily gave a blood sample, which allegedly matched the DNA from Ryan Harris’ underwear.
Despite the apparent failure of police to catch Durr sooner by using the database, most experts say Illinois is actually at the forefront of states now developing DNA systems. Illinois was among eight states to take part in a preliminary test of the FBI’s national index system over the last year.
Florida has the most productive database of any state thus far, with 53,000 samples entered and 155 “cold hits” from the database in cases where police had no other leads. By comparison, Illinois’ database contains about 14,000 samples and has produced 38 cold hits.
Gene Marlin, acting director of the state police, said some agencies still are catching up to the advances made in DNA database technology in recent years.
“The police are quickly recognizing the real value of this as another tool to use,” Marlin said. “It obviously will become much more part of the routine now that it’s going on at the national level.”
But one criminal lawyer with experience in forensic science said the failure of police to fully exploit Illinois’ database is inexcusable considering that the tool has been available here for years.
“It’s like all these criminals dropped their wallets at the scene, and the police say, `We’ll hold the wallets for 30 days, and if you ask we’ll read the names off them for you,’ ” the lawyer said.
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