6 Matches Made From Jackson County Arrests
A new state law that went into effect the first of the year is resulting in suspects for old and unsolved crimes, according to officials with the Indiana State Police.
The law requires DNA samples be taken from all persons arrested for a felony offense. This is an expansion of a previous policy to collect samples only from those convicted of felonies.
DNA samples are collected by each county jail when a person is incarcerated on a felony charge. The samples are sent to the Indiana State Police laboratory in Indianapolis for analysis and entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
ISP reports that in the first three months of 2018, their lab was sent 9,375 samples for new arrests and tested an additional 3,330 samples from new convicted offenders.
Of the total 12,705 samples, 244 came back as matches (that are referred to as ‘hits’) to other crimes.
•46 hits attributed to the 3,330 new convicted offender samples collected Jan. 1 to March 31, 2018.
•72 hits attributed to the 9,375 felony arrest samples collected Jan. 1 to March 31.
•126 hits attributed to recently completed unsolved crime scene samples.
According to Jackson County Jail Commander Charlie Murphy, six of the samples that have been sent by Jackson County into CODIS has resulted in ‘hits’ or matches to other unsolved crimes.
“The new law is doing what is was hoped it would do: help us solve crime,” Murphy said. “With this new DNA information officers are able to continue their investigations with greater focus on suspects.”
He declined to identify any of the subjects or crimes related to the new DNA matches saying that they are ongoing investigations.
According to ISP, the first arrestee hit was on January 14, 2018 and matched to an unsolved rape investigation that began in 2016
All county jails are providing arrestee samples and 44 different counties have been involved in hits in the first quarter of 2018, according to state police officials.
CODIS has generated hits between Indiana and 23 other states during the first quarter of 2018.
Maj. Steve Holland, commander of the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division commented, “We are very pleased with the results seen thus far and are confident more and more crimes will be solved with the combination of convicted and arrested persons’ samples being matched in the CODIS program.”
“None of this would have been possible without the new legislation, the cooperation of all the county jail personnel who collect the DNA samples and the diligent efforts of state police laboratory scientists that are processing these samples for input into CODIS,” Holland said.