Jack Logan

Identifying the Nameless: How Advances in Forensic Science are Leaving No One Behind

JaCk Logan

When reflecting on his participation in the development of the atomic bomb, one of the most revolutionary and devastating scientific advancements in human history, J. Robert Oppenheimer remarked: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Consumed with regret over his research contributions, he spent the better part of the rest of his life campaigning against the bomb. This tale, though compelling in its tragedy, is not a unique one. In our Twenty-First Century, we, too, are observing revolutionary technologies that are threatened by perversion for nefarious ends.

Equally, however, many of these new fields have the potential to be used for good, such as forensic science. The cornerstone of the modern discipline of forensic science is DNA analysis, which was pioneered by British scientists in 1984, originally conceived as a means of resolving paternity disputes and reuniting distant relatives. This burgeoning tool was first applied to a criminal investigation in 1985 (though this was a marathon process of over a year) with supervising scientist Sir Alec Jeffreys later lamenting that “it took a lot of DNA, and a lot of effort to get a result from a DNA sample. The real problem was that in most crime scene samples, you knew that human DNA was in there – you just didn’t have a technology sensitive enough to type it.”

DNA analysis’ role in criminal investigation has led to popular perspective of this scientific procedure becoming warped. What is, in fact, a painstakingly long, laboratorybound process becomes a technological toy for Hollywood writers to play with. While procedural crime dramas of the Twentieth century had largely been set in either an interrogation room or a courthouse, the birth of NCIS in 2003, introduced forensic science to the popular imagination. Since the subsequent rise in popularity of Bones and

Dexter, featuring scientist protagonists in an investigative setting, it has been hard to untangle the science of DNA analysis from the procedure of police work. It is an idyllic fiction – science uncovers lies and reveals the truth; justice is done as innocents are set free and the guilty are convicted.

It is a trite observation to say that reality is more nuanced. Many, including Sir Alec himself, have noted that the awesome power of DNA analysis to serve justice may also be perverted for more sinister ends, remarking that “[The UK] now have a database which is populated with in the order of eight hundred thousand entirely innocent people. This does raise very serious issues of discrimination – breach of genetic privacy, stigmatisation…branding them as future criminals is not a proportionate response in the fight against crime.”

Australia, too, has a national DNA database. In fact, we have three, all established in the months and years following 9/11 and the emergence of the War on Terror. In November 2014, Australian Justice Minister Michael Keenan announced that the nation was partnering with the UK, the US, and Canada to enable the international exchange of DNA information. If a person is convicted of a crime in any one of these countries, their DNA can be stored on any one of these databases indefinitely. In a nation where the age of criminal responsibility is a mere ten years of age, this is a cruel stain that can loom over someone for just about their entire life.

Indeed, this is a tool whose power extends into the past as well as the future; since 2007, NSW Police have operated a “DNA Backcapture Program”, which empowers officers to retroactively request DNA samples from an individual who has committed a serious offence in the past. Another point where the reality of DNA analysis diverges from its fictional counterpart is its fallibility; mistakes can occur, with horrific consequences. In the 2009 case of R v Jama in Victoria, DNA analysis was the sole evidence used to convict the defendant, who was imprisoned for eighteen months before it was discovered that contamination occurred when forensic samples were taken from the victim.

The employment of DNA analysis as a means to examine the past is one that has not only been used to keep tabs on former offenders, but also to study long-dead victims. In 1948, a man’s body was found on Somerton beach in Adelaide. He was

slumped against a seawall, dressed in a suit and tie. His pockets contained nothing to identify him. When initial investigations were inconclusive, the man was buried under a headstone reading only “the unknown man.” Now, as part of a new initiative by the South Australian government to put a name to all unidentified human remains in the state, dubbed Operation Persevere, the Somerton Man has been exhumed for laboratory analysis. Modern science will attempt to give him, and others like him, some form of justice and closure that was denied to them in their own time.

Another positive use of DNA analysis is in the identification of deceased asylum seekers, who often travel vast distances without any discernible form of ID. At Texas State University’s Forensic Anthropology Centre, scientists working as part of Operation ID study the rate of decay of human cadavers as part of research into determining migrants’ time of death. One of the scientists working on this project is Kate Spradley, who explains that “knowing how fast a body can decompose in a specific environment is going to tell us a lot, like if we find a set of remains, who we can match them to based on the date of last contact.” Factors that aid in aligning time of death with date of last contact include analysing the presence and interference of vultures, as well as how human decomposition has affected surrounding plant growth. For example, volatile fatty acids in the human body will initially kill adjacent vegetation, before subsequently enriching the soil and promoting greater plant growth. Examining these ofteninscrutable clues can be tedious, and many such investigations go nowhere, but Spradley, for one, is undeterred: “We have human rights in life and in death. And everybody has the right to be identified and returned to their family. And the family has the right to know what happened to their loved one.”

While it is tempting to give in to awe and blind amazement when greeted with the advent of revolutionary new tools and technologies, both the scientific community and the wider public have an obligation towards scrutiny. What can fuel a city-supporting power plant can create an unimaginably destructive bomb. What can reunite loved ones and lay the dead to rest justly can equally feed the creation of an all-seeing pernicious police state. In all technologies is potential energy, awaiting the shove of an ambitious advancing society.