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A judge decided on Wednesday decided on Wednesday, evidence of the most modern DNA technology that the prosecutors made directly on Rex Heuermann as the Gilgo Beach serial killer in his court hearing.
The decision of the judge of Suffolk County’s Supreme Court, Timothy Mazzei, is an important profit for prosecutors and a blow to the defense team, which questioned the validity of this type of technology that specialized in extracting nuclear DNA from damaging or difficult to invent samples such as rootless hair.
These types of individual stray hair were found in six of the seven prosecutors that Heuermann was killed, according to court records. Heuermann is charged with murder in the death of the seven women and has not guilty.
Heuermann’s defender Michael Brown had argued that the DNA technology, which is known as a whole -genome sequencing, has not yet been accepted by the scientific community and should therefore not be permitted. He said he planned to argue the validity of the technology in front of a jury.
In the meantime, the public prosecutors have argued that this type of DNA extraction was used by the local law enforcement authorities, the FBI and even the defender elsewhere in the country.
“Science was on our side and that’s why we won,” said Raymond Terney, district prosecutor of Suffolk County after the court considered the technology to be permissible.
Terney thanked his team and expert and said that he was “very grateful that this result was behind us.”
Brown said Heuermann was disappointed with the decision on Wednesday. “We do not agree to the decision of the court,” said Brown, adding later: “We believe that the evidence is clear that they do not maintain their stress.”
“This does not mean that we cannot examine these witnesses in court,” said Brown.
Heuermann’s lawyers have now submitted a new application to cite a law on public health to question the DNA evidence that “criminalizes these types of measures, a unknown laboratory for profit to test and prove in a criminal proceedings in the state of New York,” said Brown.
The prosecutor said he was not concerned about the new defense application. “We went through the FBI. We have all the rules and the mandate pursued,” said Terney.
Heuermann will be returned to court on September 23. “We quickly reach the pre -judge and have beaten up the process phase in the plot,” said the district prosecutor.
Officers of the crime laboratory official search the New York home of Gilgo Beach Morde Murder’s suspicious Rex Heuermann in 2023. – Yuki Iwamura/AFP/Getty Images
A complete genetic ‘blueprint’
The DNA analysis in this case was carried out by the Astrea Forensics based in California, a company that specializes in the sequencing of the entire genome.
The entire genome sequence is “a method that tries to read almost the entire DNA of a person who covers the entire genetic code of around 3 billion bases,” said Daniele Podini, Associate Professor at George Washington University.
According to Podini, the most important difference is that conventional tests provide a limited DNA fingerprints such as a barcode on a supermarket product, while the entire genome sequencing (WGS) offers a fully genetic “blueprint” with much more detailed findings.
Although the type of analysis “is not yet subject to a hearing in the state of New York”, the public prosecutor said in its argument to the judge at the beginning of this year that technology is often used in numerous scientific and forensic areas, including virology, health care and criminal justice – as well as law enforcement authorities, prosecutors and defenders.
New technologies are always available for examination before they become routine, said Nathan Lents, Professor of Biology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.
“Forensic methods are subject to an intensive legal examination before they are accepted as a common practice, and we see that here,” said Lents. “This is the normal way how new techniques are introduced into the legal forensic toolkit, in test cases with a lot of examination and expert statements.”
“This decision and this legal dispute mark an important step in the forensic DNA analysis,” said Terney after the judge’s judgment on Wednesday. “Here we go to science.”
Mark Morales von CNN reported Riverhead and Michelle Watson from New York. CNNS Rebekah Riess wrote and reported from Atlanta.
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