The compression fracture in the victim’s skull was about eight inches. The murder weapon was pretty clearly a large bronze statue lying nearby. The term used in the autopsy report to describe the victim’s right ear was “obliterated.” The knife wounds in the 76-year-old’s back were ante mortem, leading to the probability that the victim was tortured, particularly when combined with puncture wounds consistent with a fork found at the scene. And with those kinds of injuries, the pool of blood in which the victim lay was considerable. These are the wounds, contorted further by two days of rigor mortis, which confronted the victim’s daughter when she entered his home. She hadn’t heard from him for several days and now she knew why.

Thank goodness for the power of forensic DNA technology.

The City of Aventura Police Department wisely identified the potential probative value of some beer bottles and cigarettes found at the crime scene. While it wasn’t too long ago that finding DNA on cigarette butts was “cutting edge” crime scene work, today it is standard collection protocol—and for good reason. Confirming with the daughter that the victim neither smoked nor drank beer, the evidence was sent off to the Miami Dade Police Department laboratory. Unable to identify and match a partial fingerprint also recovered from the scene, the lab was more successful with the DNA analysis and was able to develop a DNA profile from the cigarette. That profile was then entered into the National DNA Database. The whole system—the police, the lab, CODIS—was firing on all pistons, working as it should in the pursuit of identifying and taking a brutal murderer off the streets.

Then, in 2004 the Miami Dade Police Department received a National Match Detail Report indicating a DNA match. Well, not a full match, but a partial match between the unknown suspect in the Florida homicide and an inmate in the Michigan prison system. The match consisting of 17 of 26 shared alleles established a good possibility that the suspect and the convicted offender in the Michigan system were related. How’s that for technology creating an investigative lead? With the additional information that could be provided by Y-STR testing, law enforcement’s most effective tool could very well identify the relative of a murderer and thus lead to the perpetrator himself!

So Florida tests the crime scene DNA with Y-STRs and Michigan tests the DNA sample of the offender in their system and we see if the two are related, right?

Wrong. (You knew this was going too well.) Apparently, the “National” database isn’t very national.

In an effort to garner assistance from Michigan, the Chief of Police of the City of Aventura reached out to Florida Attorney General, Bill McCollumto make the official request for assistance. McCollum agreed to help and met with Michigan’s Attorney General, Mike Cox. They discussed the DNA partial match and Y-STR testing. The Attorney General of Michigan said that while there was no law that prohibited the testing, there may be “policy issues” that stood in the way.

Policy issues? Seriously? Policy issues? Not, “We don’t have the money?” Not, “The technology just isn’t there yet?” Not, “It’s illegal or unconstitutional?” You have a policy that prevents you from leveraging the forensic technology that even the National Academy of Sciences says is the most reliable and accurate forensic tool available, to assist another state in solving a vicious homicide?

But it gets worse. The State Police don’t come under the auspices of the Attorney General. There really wasn’t anything he could do about the situation. Rather, the State Police and its lab fall under the auspices of the Governor. In other words, this policy denying the potential of solving the brutal murder of a 76-year-old man has nothing to do with the chief law enforcement officer of the state. It is Governor Granholm who has the authority to direct the Y-STR testing.