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| Ill. nets deal to test 138,000 DNA samples |
| By Chicago Sun Times |
| Published: 07/19/2004 |
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A New Jersey company has won a $3 million contract to test 138,000 DNA samples from Illinois felons and put them into a nationwide database run by the FBI, the firm announced last Monday. Orchid Cellmark hopes to triple Illinois' success rate in matching unknown DNA from crime scenes with known DNA from criminals. "The promise is enormous," said Mark Stolorow, the lab director for Orchid Cellmark and a former administrator in the Illinois State Police forensic science bureau. The State Police crime lab, whose database is linked to the federal system, has a "hit rate" of about 10 percent, Stolorow said. Illinois' offender database now contains about 28,000 DNA profiles, said Lincoln Hampton, a State Police spokesman. In the past, state law required that DNA samples be taken only from sex offenders and inmates convicted of certain violent felonies. But in 2002, Gov. George Ryan signed a law requiring DNA samples from all felons. So the number of samples is rapidly expanding. Terrell Yarbor's arrest in January showed how the system works: Yarbor, convicted of rape in 1988, is now charged in the 2001 rapes of three women. A DNA sample taken from him in 1988 was in the database and matched DNA from the 2001 attacks. The U.S. Justice Department has entered a one-year contract with Orchid Cellmark to test DNA samples taken from Illinois felons. The Illinois State Police evaluated the companies that sought the work. Stolorow insists his former State Police job did not figure into his company winning the contract. Orchid Cellmark also is testing sexual-assault kits and other crime-scene DNA from Illinois under a separate three-year contract, Stolorow said. Lifecodes won the contract in 2001 and Orchid Cellmark bought Lifecodes later that year. More than 800 sexual-assault kits -- and about 500 other pieces of biological evidence -- await testing here, Hampton said. |
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