IP: Tracking: DNA database in Okla.

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

From: believer@telepath.com
Subject: IP: Tracking: DNA database in Okla.
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 08:54:13 -0500
To: believer@telepath.com

Source:  Tulsa World
http://www.tulsaworld.com/News.htm

DNA database helps make case 
 By World's own Service 
 9/16/98

 OKLAHOMA CITY -- A 1994 law
 creating a DNA database for Oklahoma law
 enforcement contributed to Monday's
 conviction in an Oklahoma City mass murder
 case, an author of the law said Tuesday.

 Danny Keith Hooks was found guilty
 Monday of the May 16, 1992, murders of
 five women in Oklahoma City. Jurors must
 now decide whether to sentence him to
 death.

 Hooks was first identified through genetic
 evidence collected at the crime scene. The
 arrest and conviction marked one of the first
 major cases involving the Oklahoma State
 Bureau of Investigation's DNA database and
 lab since it became operational in 1994, said
 Rep. James Dunegan, D-Calera.

 Under the law, blood samples are collected
 from certain convicts, and OSBI technicians
 analyze and type the genetic markers. That
 information is then stored in a database. The
 law also enlarged the bureau's DNA
 laboratory, Dunegan said.

 The Oklahoma City mass killing had
 remained unsolved for five years. Oklahoma
 City police records showed that until Hooks
 was arrested last year, more than 700
 reports had been written on the case, 8,000
 people had been fingerprinted and more than
 400 blood samples had been analyzed in the
 case.

 The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations
 ran unidentified DNA from blood at the
 crime scene through several states' databases
 of criminals' genetic profiles, said Kym Koch,
 a spokeswoman for the OSBI. 

 While at an out-of-state national conference
 of DNA criminalists in 1996, the head of the
 OSBI's DNA lab asked experts from
 California to analyze the unknown DNA,
 Koch said. It matched Hooks' genetic
 profile, proving he had been at the crime
 scene. Prosecutors said Hooks must have
 been cut while he was killing his victims.

 Hooks had served time in a California prison
 on a rape conviction. Law enforcers were
 able to trace the DNA samples found at the
 murder scene to Hooks because he had to
 submit a DNA sample to California
 corrections officials before his release there.

 Hooks was convicted of killing the women
 during a sexual attack. He was arrested last
 year in California.

 Koch said roughly half of the states have their
 own DNA databases.

            Copyright 1996, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved.
-----------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
-----------------------




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