Montego Bay, St James – The Government’s Forensic Laboratory will be able to deliver more accurate DNA test results when it moves from its current 8 Marker system to a 16 Marker system in a few months.

This improved technology is part of a multi-million dollar undertaking according to the lab’s director Dr Judith Mowatt. She told the Observer that this would bring the lab in line with the present technology, and is part of efforts to establish a unit specifically for the testing of DNA.

DNA testing is done now as part of forensic biology.

“The technology has moved further than where we are now, and we need to move in line with it,” she said.

Mowatt explained that the 16 Marker system would make DNA tests more conclusive, as the experts would then be able to say two DNAs are 16 times alike as opposed to eight times.

“What this does is gives us a greater degree of certainty,” she noted.

Defence attorney, Earl Witter, welcomed the move. “It has always been my opinion that the guilty man alone should be condemned and not the innocent,” he remarked.

Dr Mowatt added that this improved technology will mitigate against situations such as the recent case of Stafford Cleo Webb, the 25-year-old man whose rape case was dismissed last Friday. The initial tests done at the government’s lab comparing DNA from Webb to DNA from seminal fluid recovered from the complainant using the Eight Marker system returned an inconclusive result. However, subsequent tests done using a 16 Marker system, specifically a Y-Filer testing system, which can tell whether DNA is that of a male person, proved that the two DNAs in fact did not match, thereby excluding Webb as the rapist. He was subsequently freed after spending four years in jail.

Mowatt noted that had the lab possessed this technology, which was utilised by the independent expert they would have gotten a similar result and the court would have been informed.

“Based on the sytem we used and the result we got, we could not say conclusively. Had we used a more improved system, the courts would have been informed of our findings,” she said, adding that DNA is to protect the innocent.

Mowatt added that while the 16 Marker system that will be in use at the lab will not have Y-Filer testing which is sensitive to the Y or male chromosome, the Powerplex 16 system will have a sex marker, which is able to identify the sex of the person.

In relation to criminal matters, the lab last year tested samples in relation to 138 murders, 146 rapes, 44 cases of carnal abuse and 52 cases of wounding with intent. To date, the record number of suspects tested for DNA in any one case is in relation to the rape and murder of eight year-old Shannakay Legister and nine year-old Sheneka Shakes, where 16 suspects were tested. However, none of the DNA results from the 16 suspects resulted in a matched profile with the DNA from forensic evidence recovered at the crime scene.