Rules can limit DNA matches with database

Renters who vacated a West Side house left behind three meth labs and blood spatterings in the basement, a woman cleaning the house told Columbus police in August.

Columbus firefighters checked the house and determined there were no current meth labs.

But the blood spots, along with the woman’s story to officers about how the blood spots got there, intrigued Columbus police homicide detectives enough to investigate further.

And their probe also exposed limitations for law-enforcement agencies that want to use the state’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a registry of DNA and blood samples, to identify victims and solve crimes.

According to documents filed in Franklin County Municipal Court, the woman told police that a female relative and the relative’s boyfriend had lived at the house. The relative told the woman that her boyfriend had shot a man in the basement, causing blood to spatter on the floor and a wall.

Jennifer Gribi, a thirdshift Columbus homicide detective, wanted to submit samples of the blood spatterings to CODIS, hoping they might be matched to the DNA and blood samples of people who had been arrested at one time.

But Gribi learned that under the state’s CODIS rules, the samples could not be compared unless detectives had an idea who the victim was in their case. Each state sets its own rules.

The rule for CODIS to be used is that biological material theoretically would link a potential suspect to a crime, said Dave O’neil, spokesman for the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which oversees Ohio’s CODIS registry at its London laboratory. There are also rules that disallow random blood spots not connected to crimes from being compared with CODIS samples.

The state must follow federal guidelines for CODIS, which is the FBI’S support program for criminal justice DNA databases as well as the software used to run them. But each state is allowed to make additional rules as long as it stays within minimum federal standards, said Steve Irwin, a spokesman for the Ohio attorney general’s office.

Although CODIS could not be consulted in this case, a Columbus police laboratory test found that one of the four spots tested was animal blood. Tests on the three other samples could not determine whether they were human blood, said Sgt. Jeff Strayer, supervisor of the Columbus police thirdshift homicide unit.

Strayer said he believes exceptions should be made so that more blood samples could be tested — especially in cases such as this, in which a victim needs to be identified.

“If (the spots) tested as human, what would we have done? What would our next move have been?”

Strayer said such cases aren’t common. He said he understands “the rules are in place so that the system isn’t overloaded with hair and partial finger DNA of possible victims that may or may not even be victims and may or may not have been involved in a crime.”

“I can see where they need to keep the integrity of the system intact,” Strayer wrote later in an email. “Perhaps, maybe, there is even wiggle room on a caseby-case basis if we have the chance to discuss with the powers that be (about) whatever circumstances we have that we feel would warrant putting the DNA in CODIS.”

There are special cases that allow the use of CODIS. For instance, O’neil said, exceptions are made if there is a large pool of blood.

“A coroner would need to indicate based on the amount of blood present (that) a person would not survive,” O’neil said. “The DNA developed from this pool of blood could go in as an unidentified person.”

When a body part is found, that, too, can be submitted.

On March 28, 2017, two legs from a woman were found in a garbage truck whose contents were processed at a South Side collection and sorting facility. Nearly two years later, in late January, the legs were positively identified as those of 21-year-old Candice Aliciea Taylor of Columbus’ Northeast Side. Police publicly announced the match Thursday.

Columbus homicide detectives checked the DNA sample with all databases, but no match was made, said Detective Steve Glasure. Taylor did not have a criminal record, so she would not have had a DNA sample in the CODIS database.

Her homicide case remains unsolved, and detectives won’t discuss the case.