Have a call with AmyJ. and AEquitas to talk about ways to mitigate the issue they had from impacting prosecutions as a whole.
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Paige confirmed with AmyJ, AEquitas, and KY SAKI on a date for the call.
Carey emailed to ask for assistance for their prosecutors on how to deal with the issue of contamination in the SAK testing.
KY SAKI, AmyJ., and AEquitas held a call to hear about KY's fears about prosecuting their cases and disclosing that there have been any issues in testing with Sorensen. They are concerned by how public the contamination issues have been. AmyJ provided insight based on her experience with other jurisdictions. AEquitas provided legal information from their experience in disclosing information to the defense. In addition, both SMEs let her know that issues with testing are quite common and could easily be explained to the jury.
The call helped with the fears that KY SAKI had about prosecuting these cases. AmyJ and AEquitas were both going to pull together additional information for the site. AmyJ and AEquitas were both going to pull together additional information for the site.
AmyJ sent an article that tracked errors in DNA at one lab over a 5 year period. She commonly sources this when talking about error and error rates. She also let everyone know that she contacted a few other jurisdictions about a large collaborative response. AEquitas said they'd be happy to discuss anytime.
From Carey: I briefed my lab and Dana, the prosecutor on our SAKI Cold Case Unit, after our call. Right now our preliminary plan of action is as follows - we plan to follow a similar course to that of DC by disclosing the article + we plan to follow the advice of Patty with the motion in limine. We are in process of supplementing our discovering/are drafting an affidavit that our laboratory supervisor will sign that outlines what has occurred thus far (all while noting that the particular case pending before the Court does not appear to have been affected). The news article will accompany the affidavit and motion in limine. One remaining issue for us is that our lab has indicated that they will not be completely finished double checking all the data involved until late January. I believe Dana plans to note that in the affidavit and ask for a hearing on our motion after the process is complete. Check back in in December.
During the 2019 Check-in Call, Paige talked to Carey about next steps with AmyJ and AEquitas on this issue. They had proceeded with the case, and so, that particular need was complete.
The recommendations provided by AmyJ and AEquitas had been very helpful in the AG's Office. No further assistance is needed right now because Carey reported that due to the issues with Sorensen, all of their data was in Q&A in the CODIS database. The FBI had set them up with a section for full review of all cases that won't be released until the entire set runs at 100% QC with no issues. They are also processing the offender samples at the same time to pair with this data. April 2019 is the estimate for getting results.
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