New York: The leads have dried up in the killing of a young woman in Queens during a jog last summer.
Tips about potential suspects have gone nowhere. A reward has failed to bear fruit, even as it has swelled to more than $280,000. And the samples of a stranger’s DNA found on the hands, throat and cell phone of the jogger, Karina Vetrano, 30, did not match those in national offender databases.
But authorities say that the recovered DNA could hold the key to solving the case if state officials authorise what is called familial searching, which allows investigators to search criminal databases to identify likely relatives of the offender.
The technique, which has been used more than a dozen times in the United States over the past 10 years, represents a frontier in the evolving world of forensic science. While some methods, like microscopic hair testing and bite-mark matching, have been challenged in recent years, DNA testing remains a staple of forensic investigation, used to identify suspects and exonerate the wrongfully convicted.
Familial searching allows investigators to search offender databases with wider parameters to identify people who are likely to be close relatives of the person who may have committed a crime. Law enforcement officials say a hit in the database is less a piece of evidence than it is a lead, and such matches have helped solve some heinous crimes in states where the practice has been authorised.
But the method raises some complicated ethical issues that have trailed the expansion of DNA technology since its introduction. And as the collection of DNA grows in the private sector, so do the concerns about its potential misuse, particularly in the hands of government institutions.
Problems at some laboratories, including the New York City medical examiner’s office, have highlighted how DNA evidence is not immune from human error. A 2013 review of more than 800 rape cases processed by the medical examiner’s office found that DNA evidence was mishandled in dozens of cases.
In the case of Vetrano, who police say was sexually assaulted and strangled, investigators’ lack of progress led Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, to push for familial searching.
“The Police Department reached a point where they exhausted all their leads. And they came to us and said in essence, ‘What else can we possibly do?’” Brown said in an interview.
Brown and two of his deputies, Eric Rosenbaum and Robert J. Masters, said that Vetrano’s case presented an ideal situation for using familial searching, in part because of what they say is the high likelihood that the DNA is from the perpetrator.
“It is a stranger rape case,” Masters said. “In the annals of law enforcement, there are few fact patterns that are more frightening.”
The New York state Commission on Forensic Science, a 14-member panel appointed by the governor to develop standards for forensic laboratories, and its seven-member DNA subcommittee will hold a meeting next month on whether to authorise the technique.
Vetrano’s case — along with the public pleas of her father, Philip, and his behind-the-scenes work with the Police Department and elected officials — has re-energised the push for familial searching.
Critics of the technique say that regardless of its potential for success, it expands the use of DNA databases beyond their original intent. They fault it for allowing searches of people who happen to be related to someone who has committed a crime and say that given the composition of the offender databases, familial searching disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics.
“You’re creating a database of suspects largely defined by their race and class,” said Stephen Mercer, chief attorney of the forensics division of the public defender’s office in Maryland, which outlawed the technique in 2008 in the face of these concerns. “That is just so fundamentally against our core values.”
The District of Columbia has also prohibited these searches.
If the DNA subcommittee and the New York state forensic commission vote to approve familial searching after the meeting February 10, a 45-day period for public comment will follow.
The Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union have filed memos with the commission that question the method’s constitutionality as well as the commission’s authority to weigh in on the matter.
Many law enforcement officials around the state said that any trade-offs in civil liberties were minor compared with the potential to solve some particularly difficult cases. “Invasion of privacy is basically what law enforcement does. We do it legally. We do it with warrants, court orders,” William J. Fitzpatrick, Onondaga County district attorney and a proponent of the technique, said.
Fitzpatrick, who is a member of the state forensic commission, compared the method to a tip from an informant. “You’re telling me that if I have a scientific piece of evidence that shows me a perpetrator’s son is in prison — what’s a better lead?”
In New York City, the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, and the district attorneys from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, support authorising the method.
Vetrano acknowledges that the testing may not lead to his daughter’s killer, but he said he would continue to advocate its use. “This would have been left as a dead issue unless I started making waves,” he said. “I’m the squeaky wheel and I will never ever stop.”
