Transcripts of the Attorney General's Initiative on DNA Laboratory Backlogs (AGID-LAB) Working Group

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

FORENSIC RESOURCE NETWORK

MR. TURNER: Thank you, Sarah, for giving us the opportunity to present to this group this morning. I'm very excited about it, to be able to speak in front of an esteemed group of leaders and international, as a matter of fact, and I think everyone here is excited to talk to you a little bit about the Forensic Resource Network.

Some you haven't met me, maybe as much as half. I have been at NIJ for a little over six years. Initially I was a contractor before I became a civil servant, bureaucratic entrepreneur. We decided, this being a working group, we were going to just each take about five minutes to talk about what each organization of the Forensic Resource Network is going to do and then afterwords we may have some time to interact with the group if you have any questions.

NIJ formed this Forensic Research Network to be exactly that, a resource to the state and local crime laboratory community. What really guided that was the funding, and the funding comes from the Crime Laboratory Improvement Program. The Forensic Research Network, like CLIP, is interested in supporting all forensic disciplines, not just DNA; however, we have a lot of activities that are going on in the world of DNA.

NIJ was fortunate enough to have a very successful DNA laboratory improvement program, and its successor, CLIP, has also been successful, but with that success came visibility and some Congressional earmarks. So we had the public management question of how do you steer these Congressional earmarks into something that meets the program, programmatic intent, and so we established the Forensic Research Network. We've grounded it in the needs as identified in the 1999 document, Forensic Science Review of Status and Needs and the follow on CLIP summit the following May I think it was.

The member organizations, I think most of you know the leaders of these organizations. The National Center for Forensic Science, Carrie Whitcomb is the director. The acting deputy director is Dale Heideman just over from FDLE, and the associate director of research is Jack Ballantyne, who will talk later. The Marshall University Forensic Science Center is directed by Dr. Terry Fenger, who is also up here, and is assisted by Lynda Holup, who is in the rear.

The National Forensic Science Technology Center, the executive director is Bill Tilstone and the deputy director is Kevin Lothridge. The West Virginia University Forensic Identification Program, the initiative there is headed up by Max Houck, and Michael Yura is the program director of their ID program.

We got together and established a mission, and it was a pretty simple activity, noting what NIJ's mandate is to serve state and local law enforcement and the goals of the Crime Laboratory Improvement Program. We thought that the key to making this work - and I'm referring to this bottom paragraph - is to match the strengths of the individual organizations with the needs of the community and to offer a balanced portfolio of near-term deliverables with some longer term research because after all with three universities, research is their strong points, so we wanted to take advantage of that, but not just devote ourselves entirely to research and development.

So here are our goals: To enhance forensic science through research and development, to promote the application of new technologies, to work to enhance individual and organizational competency, and to provide support of operational services.

Our program areas are just really a reflection or are tied directly to our goals, and this is just a few examples of some of the activities, although no detail there, some of which will be talked about by the various member organizations.

One thing I wanted to hit on because we're very excited about it is the Forensic Resource Network's first collaborative effort where the network has matured from a paper structure to actually an organization that works together. We are doing a pilot project with Alabama to assist with accreditation and also assist with their 100,000 convicted offender sample backlog. I'm going to let Kevin and Terry talk in a little more detail, but there was some initial training, there were some initial audits, some gap analysis, and a corrective action plan. Recently they provided to train the trainers, so the various captains or team leaders within Alabama can continue to work internally. Marshall University's collaborative effort with them involves bringing a 3100 on line and some software training and the actual analysis of convicted offender samples.

The challenge is taking organizations and establishing that clear linkage to the goal of CLIP, which in a university environment is at times challenging, but we have been able to establish a network of community leaders that we could get feedback from. So far this is really the first time that we're emerging as a network that can begin to show some deliverables to the community. Thanks.

MR. LOTHRIDGE: Thank you, Chris. Kevin Lothridge. I'm taking after Paul Ferrara yesterday.

One of the things about having directed money - Chris called it an earmark; I call it directed funding - is that we actually are a cooperative agreement with NIJ, which is a little different than a grant, and we provide goods and services to operational state and local crime laboratories. I'm going to talk about a few of those programs briefly. I don't have any slides. I just want to go through these and hopefully answer some questions at the end of this, and I will spend a little more time on the Alabama project, as well Terry will be doing following me up here.

The first one I want to talk about is the DNA laboratory audit program. This element of the cooperative agreement is to provide each laboratory that does DNA analysis with biannual external DNA audits using a consensus checklist and trained auditors. As of October of this year 27 state and local laboratories have received these audits. We have 40 planned through 2000 up to 2003 right now, the early part of 2003.

We do use program managers, Mark Nelson, who happens to be here. This is meant to try to remove some redundancy in all the audits that DNA laboratories get, and it's based on a standardized checklist. We use trained auditors who are sharp end still doing the work, but it's in a manner where it's not ad hoc. It's actually a formalized program. The reports are done, and it give us more consistency to that. So it's a direct advantage to the laboratories that sign up for this program, and every laboratory can sign up for this.

Chris mentioned that there were some competency based workshops. We did those in 2000 and 2001, basically talking about laboratory auditing. From those workshops we developed a CD ROM, which shipped in July to all 366 crime labs that we've identified. 1,000 of those were printed, and as of the last week in September 757 of those CDs have been requested of the total 1,000 from NCJRS, leaving about 141 in stock, and we plan to give 100 out of those at the ASCLD meeting next week. So this is a CD ROM, interactive, just the basics of what is quality assurance and laboratory auditing.

In response to looking at individual competency we've put together a program which we call the academy concept, and it's aimed at new employees and transitioning employees. It's important to look at both of those. It's designed to provide intensive hands-on training, and it's focused at getting the person at the end of that program to be supervised casework ready or close to supervised casework ready.

One of the things we heard yesterday was that lots of people train people; they leave and go to work for somebody else. I think that's a crime because that's a resource you never ever recover. If they are trained and go someplace else, the people that funded the training get nothing out of it and they have to start all over again. So this intensive academy has been piloted with 11 people for controlled substances. We're currently working on the pilot programs with other areas, DNA being one and firearms is another.

The program is 16 weeks in duration, and then there would be a need for shorter update courses for new techniques that come out. This has been briefed to the TWGED group, and we've looked at the TWGED guidelines trying to incorporate as many of those as possible.

Another area that we're currently working on, we have two in this area, which are validation kits. Basically what we're looking at is there are a lot of laboratories that get into the validation of new equipment or changed equipment, and we wanted to put together a product for them that they can use for validation, basically defining the steps and experiments necessary prior to performing casework, looking at getting a group of consensus experts in to look at what the best practices are.

The target objective is a kit that meets the Federal Bureau of Investigation Guidelines for QA/QC of the laboratory conducting forensic DNA testing and convicted offender databasing, provide a set of form fillable documents that can be used by the customer that covers the required records for validation as defined by the standards, a set of data to assist with the interpretation generated by the customer's own laboratory, a list of reagent supplies, a list of reference articles, an experiment list that covers solution preparation, calibration of equipment prior to commencing the validation, sample methods from literature and the reference, a list of experiments to be completed, including detailed instructions on the number of samples that should be analyzed, a list of expected results, and a troubleshooting guide. We're hoping for mark one of that, which contains no biological materials, by mid-2003. We're in the process of working on that.

Just to finish up just a little bit more about the Alabama project, the project was designed to demonstrate the benefits of training internal auditors and then using those internal staff people in two rounds of internal audits for looking at their level of preparation for in this case ASCLD-LAB accreditation, and then after doing those rounds of obs we train the trainer to bring the people in so that they would continue to marshal them through the ongoing quality assurance process because it's not a one-time event; it's an ongoing event.

Our understanding is that Alabama - we started this project with them in October of last year - are planning to apply for accreditation in the next two months. That's their choice, but that's what they're reporting to us. If we look at what the averages were, they have basically nine laboratories, and when we did the first round in February, the averages were quite low, and they're now in the high 90s. So they're moving along quite well and have taken this up. It's in conjunction with Marshall, who is doing the next piece of this, their DNA backlog, helping them validate that. We're trying to get the total package to the state to be accredited and have their DNA database on line.

MR. FENGER: I would like to thank the director for allowing us to present today. What I would like to do is give you a little bit of background about Marshall University and its agenda. Many of you may not be familiar with Marshall. We have a forensic science center that is actually composed of two components. One is a master's level forensic science program, and we've just recently graduated our sixth class. We take about 15 students per year. The other is the DNA laboratories where we work with the West Virginia State Police or historically we worked with them to do the West Virginia CODIS database.

So in actuality what happens is that the State Police collect samples from the convicted felons in their state, they bar code those samples, and then send them to Marshall. We do the ADI system, the profiler plus and co-filer, and then we return those bar coded samples back to the State Police for inclusion in the state database as well as NDIS.

What we've done with the State Police over the years has not only been the DNA testing aspect, but it has also included education. As part of our forensic science program six of the State Police criminalists took classes on a part-time basis, and they have attained their master's degree over the last six years.

We have a memo of understanding with the State Police that we will serve as their research service and educational wing, and WVU has a similar MOU with the State Police. So there is quite a bit of interaction between the universities and the West Virginia State Police.

This actually was the initiation of our interaction with law enforcement about ten years ago, and since then we've expanded our horizons to interact with Alabama. Alabama, as Kevin indicated, has close to 100,000 samples that are part of their backlog, and what we've started to do within the last half year is work with Alabama to reduce that backlog as well as to change platforms, DNA testing platforms, from the FM Biosystem to the ABI system. We are doing this in conjunction - the two labs are working in unison to make this conversion.

What we've done, we've used 310s over the last four years or so to do the West Virginia database, but now we've moved to the 3100. At the same time Alabama has acquired a 3100 instrument, and we're validating the instrument in unison. We go to workshops, we exchange lab analysts, and this allows us to move ahead in a more rapid and expeditious manner.

We've done sensitivity studies, reproducibility studies, carryover, and concordance studies with Alabama. As part of the quality assurance process they supplied 300 samples to us for us to test, and these are samples that they obtained using the Promega kit. They obtained the profile using the Promega kit, and they were noted to have allelic variance. So they used us to repeat that testing, which we did, and to affirm our capability to do the testing and really to initiate the whole process.

Since then we've acquired the order of 5,000 of the Alabama samples as bar coded samples, and we are working - will be working on doing DNA analysis on those samples. We're still in the process of validating the 3100, but once the 3100 is validated we will use that instrument and Idenofiler to do the actual analysis. We are also working with Alabama to institute robotics. We're wanting to move towards automation. Since they have such a large number of samples, we feel that it's important that we automate.

On the educational side five of the analysts in the Alabama system did not have certain core courses as indicated in the DAB guidelines. These include, of course, genetics and cell and molecular biology. At this point in time we're about two-thirds through a cell and molecular biology course that we're submitting to or teaching Alabama through distance education. We have a distance education center at Marshall. We provided Alabama with a PolyCom system. It's on loan, and they will take the course for graduate credit and satisfy the DAB mandate.

So in essence we have been working with Alabama at both the educational and the DNA testing side, but we've also partnered with NFSTC so far as audit training. We hosted an NFSTC run audit training seminar at Marshall, and a number of people from Alabama were in attendance at that training session.

So that's in essence a summary of what we're involved in, and we will continue to work with Alabama as well as other partners in the forensic community. Thank you.

MR. BALLANTYNE: Good morning, colleagues and friends. I have five minutes to talk about the National Center for Forensic Science. The vision of NCFS - and that's a picture of a recent building - is to provide innovative solutions to meet the challenges facing the investigative and forensic science criminal justice communities.

We do this by providing research, education, training, tools, and technology in three areas, biological evidence, physical evidence, and digital evidence. So that's the word from my sponsor.

From the forensic biology perspective our mission is quite simply to assist the national and international forensic science community by, first of all, conducting research, which contributes to the body of foreign science knowledge and is also the basis for new technology development; validating methods and technology, which facilitates technology transfer; providing operational support whenever possible. Examples would be the development of online databases for Y-STR markers, and we have civil mass fatality initiatives ongoing.

Part of our mission is also to provide vigorous educational programs, a bachelor of science and master of science in forensic science and a new interdisciplinary program, a Ph.D. program in biomolecular science where students conduct doctoral level research.

In terms of our projects, the projects that are ongoing at the moment, we have a balanced portfolio we think of research and development validation and operational support. The projects we have in house at the moment are Y chromosome markers, assessment and repair of damaged DNA templates, RNA profiling for body fluid identification to replace or to supply conventional methods for body fluid identification, determination of physical characteristics or traits from biological stains, and low copy number of single cell analysis.

In terms of the matter at hand, the AGID-LAB - the matter at hand is how do we reduce DNA backlogs, so as I was thinking about this, how NCFS could play a role, basically from the analysis side if you can develop something that's quicker or cheaper or smaller, in general you're going to have some impact on the ability to process backlogs. So we have a couple of projects that we believe that could be conducive to help solve this problem.

The two projects are the Y chromosome project and the RNA project. The reason we're interested in Y chromosome markers is that, of course, males commit most of the crime in this country. 80% of all violent crime is committed by males, 95% of all sex offenses, and the reason why Y chromosome markers are useful is simply in those cases where there is male and female mixtures where the female component is present at a very high concentration compared to the male, typically in rape kit swabs or sodomy cases.

There are a couple of other reasons why Y chromosome markers are useful. One is there is no need for differential extraction. Differential extraction, of course, is used to separate sperm from nonsperm cells,and it's a relatively time-consuming process. With Y chromosome markers in theory you don't need to do that. We can also determine quite clearly and quite easily the number of semen donors, which aids in the determination of mixtures involving multiple semen donors, for example.

With regard to Y chromosome marker projects we have, we have a major program here. We were looking at STR development. We've already developed a couple of multiplex systems that are optimized for forensic casework, and our view is that in some cases only Y-STRs can be used for certain cases. We're also developing new systems. We have 30 additional markers. So we have more than 40 to 50 STRs in house at the moment.

We're also developing a Y-STR haplotype database for those STR markers that don't presently exist in an easily obtainable form for the community. We're also interested in Y-SNP development using a new type of sequencing technology, pyrosequencing; however, in terms of aiding the backlog situation, we believe that Y chromosome markers could be used to perform a rapid analysis of rape kit evidence. For example, here is a profile of a male haplotype showing different Y-STR markers. There are 18, 19 markers there using three nanograms DA. However, if you take a post-coital vaginal swab where you do no differential extraction, just add 300 nanograms of DNA from that swab, there will be a mixture of male and female, and then you can get quite clearly the male profile, and if you judiciously choose your markers, you can reduce any female background that sometimes exists.

So leveraging off our project on low copy number, what you can do is you can take a sample at the top of the diagram there, and you can do a direct lysis of the sample. It takes about 20 minutes, 30 minutes, ten minutes. You can do a PCR prep, you can amplify, you can do your capillary electrophresis prep and the analysis, and certainly within five hours or so, five hours, 40 minutes, you can get a complete male profile. One could incorporate - instead of an analysis you could real-time PCR and reduce that time dramatically just to show that male profile exists; however, by doing it this way you actually get a profile as well.

The other project that can be of use is the RNA project we believe because every single cell that exists, only 10 to 15 percent of the 38 to 40 thousand human genes are expressed, and the expression of these genes - each cell has a unique constellation of genes that are expressed, and one can look at proteins, but proteinomics hasn't reached that stage yet where we can do massive analysis. If we look at RNA, messenger RNA, messenger RNA can provide easy identification of body fluids with greater specificity. We have identified genes that only expressed in vaginal secretions, semen, saliva, and blood. There is a proved timeliness. We can automate this in theory, and decrease sample consumption.

Basically if you look at blood, semen, saliva, what is called the multicellular transcriptome is the range of RNA markers that are present, some of which are unique, and we would be after that. This is an example of semen specific genes where you have on the bottom there PRM1, PRM2, BPY1 and 2, et cetera. These are semen specific genes, which are not expressed in other body fluids or if they are expressed, they're expressed at different levels and a different size range.

So we believe that in conclusion what we can do if we put time and effort into this, you could take a rape kit on the upper left side there and you could take a swab cutting and you coextract DNA into RNA, and we're working on doing that. It's not as facile as it seems, but one can do it. You then can go through the DNA stream, which then is direct lysis amplification capillary electrophoresis. The RNA stream would involve multiplex real-time PCR. It would give you the body fluid identification, and then you've got a male profile or not. If you've got a male profile, then you can process a swab further for your other traditional markers. If there is no male profile, then no further action is taken.

So what this would do would enable you to ascertain the body fluids present. For example, this is blood and saliva - this is a vaginal swab that has vaginal secretions. It has blood and saliva present. It is an anal swab. It is an oral swab. It confirms that, and it will also tell you which body fluids are present. That would take less than six hours to perform that assuming everything was put in place. Thank you.

MR. HOUCK: My name is Max Houck. I'm the projects director at West Virginia University. I'm the director of what is called the Forensic Science Initiative. That is part of the identification program at West Virginia University.

Let me just give you a brief outline of that if you're not familiar with it already. It's an undergraduate program that offers a bachelor's of science in forensic identification. There are four tracks to that program, latent fingerprint and crime scene, which would be one track; biology; chemistry; and toxicology.

Essentially the students follow a pre-med program for two years, the first two years. Then they apply to the program. They get interviewed. They go through a background process, a background check process, and then somewhere around 30 or so students out of about 300 - we've got about a 10 to 1 ratio - actually make it into the program and then take upper level science courses, forensic science courses, and a handful of electives. They also then go through an internship process. So far the majority of our graduates have been placed in forensic science laboratories or in jobs that relate to forensic science.

That has been the primary thrust of the CLIP money at WVU so far. I started in January to spearhead what we're calling the forensic science initiative, which is largely research, professional education courses, and then also extending our own educational ability and building an infrastructure for continued research and for educational purposes at the university.

Some of the areas that we are working in that relate to AGID-LAB's interest, we funded the technical working group on education and training, which turned its finalized draft into NIJ several months ago now. It was delivered within 18 months of the project's start date, which included extensive commentary from not only the TWGED group, but also outside laboratories, outside of reviewers, outside forensic science professionals. We have a great deal of comment, a great deal of input, and it's an area that's obviously of great interest to the forensic science community.

The guidelines, the TWGED guidelines, have been picked up by the forensic education and professional accreditation committee, which is initially being sponsored by the American Academy of Foreign Sciences, and they're looking to use these as accreditation standards for forensic science educational programs. They're going to have five test programs in 2003, and they look to make it operational in 2004.

So the whole process of starting with TWGED and going through what is now called FEPAC is moving quite speedily, but I think that's also a reflection of the need for that type of oversight, that type of standardization and guidelines in the forensic education community.

We have a pilot project at WVU with West Virginia State Police to incorporate personal digital systems or PDAs, Windows-based PDAs, into DNA analysis so that then the PDA becomes the conduit through which the analyst then interacts with all of the instrumentation in the laboratory. So instead of carrying around 2 or 3 or 4 inch files of paper, all of the case load is carried on a PDA.

They will cradle it, identify themselves biometrically, upload the data. They can then continue filling out the forms, do the paperwork on the PDA, take it to their desk, cradle it again, reidentify, download it to the server. It can then be archived, printed, reviewed, et cetera. So the whole idea is to speed up the work flow. The pilot project will be completed by the end of this year and a full proposal is expected to be submitted to NIJ through our research program.

In conjunction with NFSTC WVU has funded a program to provide 350 forensic scientists with all of the ASTM's forensic science standards. Additionally with those standards comes membership, and that gives 350 foreign scientists an opportunity to participate in the standardization process, in drafting, reviewing, and then publishing these voluntarily consensus guidelines that ASTM produces, which we feel is crucial to bringing more of forensic science into a standardized methodological process.

Then in terms of resources, we now have two crime scene houses. We had one for quite some time. We now have a second crime scene house, which are literally houses on campus that have been converted into facilities for making mock crime scenes, and then the students will process them. It's a learning environment, so think of it as a laboratory that happens to look like a house where we can reconfigure a variety of crimes to occur, and they can process the rooms and then go downstairs to the lecture hall, which also has additional laboratory facilities, and review their work or get further education and then go back up and reapply it. We now have a second house for that as well. Our first house is extensively wired for video and sound for producing content for educational purposes, distributed learning, that sort of thing.

In addition to these we also have some research that's ongoing on campus, one of which is determining time since deposition of blood stains, and currently the researcher has the ability to determine that out to about 12 days, how long a blood stain has been at a particular crime scene. Then also we're looking at DNA extraction from preserved samples, samples that have been subjected to formaldehyde, looking at DNA yield from that, and also new methods for analyzing mitochondrial DNA using denatured HPLC process for maybe a quick screening, but we're also looking at that as maybe a way of looking at other types of DNA information from samples obtained either at crime scenes or through other sources. Thank you.

MR. TURNER: We still have ten minutes before I open up it up to questions. Feel free to ask any of us any questions. We hope that through this presentation that there may be some ideas on how we might serve as a resource or how we may be part of an AGID-LAB recommendation or solution. That's what we at NIJ are committed to, making this resource network responsive to your needs. Are there any questions?

MR. SCHMITT: Chris, let me ask Kevin, if I may, to elaborate a little bit on the NFSTC audit versus the accreditation process for DNA labs. What do you do more of? Does the one lead to the other? Is the audit process only DNA or is it all forensic techniques?

MR. LOTHRIDGE: The audit process is required DNA audit so people can upload to CODIS. That's what the DNA audit is.

MR. SCHMITT: To meet the FBI guidelines then.

MR. LOTHRIDGE: To meet the FBI guidelines based on people that are properly trained. The people we use have been trained both to the checklist and by the FBI. So those people have all been trained. It does not lead to a certification.

We have two sides of our house at the NFSTC, if you will. One side is a cost recovery side, and we do DNA certification for private DNA laboratories, and that's totally separate from this DNA audit program, which is to go to approximately 130 publicly funded state and local DNA laboratories.

MR. COFFMAN: I wanted to ask you about your training programs you're developing for forensic scientists. What is the plan? If you had all the resources you needed, what would be your ideal plan especially for DNA? What would be involved in the training at your site? Also do they come there or is it over the Internet?

MR. LOTHRIDGE: The plan is if we had everything, it would be great. It's 16 weeks, 12 weeks of that which is located at our facility. What we're developing is the pilot programs for these and a set of instructional material. There is no way that if you're doing 12 DNA analyses, for example, and you ran two of them a year because you would really kill your people if you did more than that, that's 24. That's not even going to even meet the need that Paul Ferrara put in CNA News of 6 to 10 thousand forensic scientists in the next ten years.

So what we're developing is a set of materials. We do have hands-on site for 12 weeks. Let me go through the drug chemistry one, which is one we've already done, so we've got some experience with that. They come for an orientation. They go back to their host laboratories. Some of those people actually reported on their first day to our site, not to who hired them, so they were pretty fresh.

They came for a two-day orientation. They went back for four weeks of some online training. Then they came back for 12 weeks. There is credit college involved in this. In the first drug committee one there was eight graduate credits. So they were only at our site for those 12 weeks from 8:00 to 5:00. They were actually online after 5:00 and doing graduate course work with the University of Florida and Florida International University.

So there is the component of operational training and there is the academic component, which are both needed when we talked to the people. As far as the drug chemists went, we worked closely with everybody, and there was a real need to make sure you normalize that so when they went back, the lab's portion of their training was to train them on what they were going to do at that laboratory. We didn't give specific individual training that says if you work for the Virginia Division of Forensic Science, this is how you analyze a case. We gave them the basic underpinning so when they go back, they can identify a substance with limited direction.

The plan would be, Dave, actually to run two of those at our site because that's about as many as you can run, probably two different types of academy in conjunction, but you would need a series of places or a series of states or things like Virginia has in their academy to meet that need. When you look at numbers that are out there of 6 to 10 thousand, I don't know how we're going to meet that need.

MR. COFFMAN: So there is not necessarily a lab that they're doing wet chemistry there for the drug chemists.

MR. LOTHRIDGE: Yes. There is all the equipment. It's fully functioning, operational. As a matter of fact, if we're doing DNA, we have a 3100 sitting there ready to go for them to use. So, yes, it is laboratory space.

MR. COFFMAN: That's good.

MR. SCHMITT: Any other questions for this panel? Chris, thank you to you and your copresenters for that interesting presentation. Why don't we take five minutes for a quick break and we'll come back right back and stay on track with the agenda.