Illinois State Police will stop sending forensic materials to a Virginia DNA laboratory for analysis after state officials determined that the nationally known lab botched nearly a quarter of the results, reports the Chicago Tribune. Officials said an internal quality assurance program put in place last December found questions with the results from Bode Technology in Virginia, which potentially could have led to suspects in rapes going free, officials said.
Quality control testing was done on rape kits in which Bode had told state police that no semen was found. But the testing, performed on 51 rape kits, in fact showed that semen was present in 11 of those tests, for which Bode had provided “false negatives.” That represents an error rate of nearly 22 percent. The 51 rape kits were picked from 1,200 cases in which Bode said they found no evidence of semen. A Bode Technology spokesman said the firm had not been made aware of any specific complaints by Thursday afternoon. “Bode Technology has successfully processed more than 2,000 cases for the Illinois State Police over the past year,” said the spokesman.
Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0508190275aug19,1,2637267.story?coll=chi-newslocal-hed