You were talking about EDTA vials and not refrigerating them. Can you give a simple explanation as to what happens if a vial were not refrigerated for a lengthy period of time and the material degraded? What happens?

Isn't that question kind of vague, lengthy period of time?

Well, let's say it's not refrigerated for a long enough period of time so that the material degrades, however long that is. What happens?

Well, as far as an analogy or an explanation, it's similar to the degradation of any form of biological evidence or sample. I like to use as an example, when it comes to, you know, field evidence which could then I suppose be carried through over to a blood vial that was improperly stored, it's just like having a piece of meat or any other sort of biological entity. If you leave it sitting out on your counter, eventually it's going to rot to the point where it's going to be unusable or go bad. In the case of biological evidence or blood in a blood vial, eventually under improper storage conditions, the components within it are going to rot and break down and become unusable for forensic purposes.

Okay. And when you say unusable, what do you mean?

That when we use those items in our testing, we will get no results.

But does the degradation that takes place or can take place in a blood vial, is it going to change the nature of the blood that it appears to be someone else's?

Well, as a rule, it won't change. It will just go to the point where you can not get any sort of result. There is one exception to that, but as a rule, it will not.

Okay. And when you say one exception--I don't want to go into this in detail right now--but are you talking about one particular genetic marker?

Yes.

Okay. Now--excuse me. When you ship biological material out to an outside laboratory, is it shipped in a frozen condition?

No. Not at this time. We place them into like a federal express or something like that overnight pack and ship it.

So there probably--there may be as much as a 24-hour period of time that it is not frozen as it's being transmitted?

That is correct.

And what is the effect of that?

It doesn't appear to have any. We originally when we started submitting evidence for DNA analysis used to package them in cold packs and created very large containers, and we got away from that and have not noticed any change in the results or, you know, the quantity of positive typing results that we've obtained.

All right. And were you in fact able to perform conventional testing to determine the genetic markers on the reference sample, item 17, in this case?

Yes, I was.

Now, going back--to continue on with our evidence collection questions, when evidence is being collected at a crime scene, do you use clean instruments or sterile instruments?

They're clean, not sterile.

And is that--is it sufficient to use clean instruments?

Yes, it is.

What's the distinction between clean and sterile?

Well, in the case of a sterile instrument, it's something that's been autoclaved at a high temperature to remove absolutely every little bit of any form of biological material or, you know, to render it useless in essence. They're sterile. It would be like in surgical instruments and that type of thing. Clean is a matter of wiping them down using a--what we call a chem-wipe, which is a, you know, scientific tissue and a little bit of water or something wiping off all the residue that's on it.

And is it accepted forensic practice to use clean instruments as opposed to sterile in the field when you're collecting biological instrument--biological samples?

Yes, it is.

Have you ever noticed any problems with that in the years that you've been in serology?

Objection. Vague.

Sustained. Rephrase the question.

Have any problems been encountered as a result of using clean instruments in terms of contaminating samples?

Objection. Vague, lack of foundation.

Sustained. Rephrase the question.

Sir, when you use clean instruments, do you use the clean instruments to pick up the control and the swatch?

Yes.

And if there were a problem in using a clean instrument, would you expect that to show up somewhere in the testing?

Objection. Vague.

Overruled.

Well, that's one of the reasons you take a control, is to--you're handling it in the same way as you are the evidentiary bloodstain or whatever biological stain it happens to be. And if there was a problem in using clean rather than sterile, I would expect to see an on-going problem with results showing up in our controls.

And have you noticed any such problem in the years that you've been in serology?

No.

What about change in gloves between the collection of biological specimens? Is that something that's necessary?

Not between every one. Just as a matter of course, I would expect somebody to change them if the gloves got particularly dirty or bloody from handling something. But just to say you have to change it between every item, that's not necessary.

Why?

Well, for one thing, you want to be using techniques that limit as much handling as possible with that item. Whether you're wearing gloves or not wearing gloves doesn't mean that you're going to be grabbing the item in inappropriate ways. You are trying to limit the amount of contact that you have with it. And as a rule, even with gloves on, your gloves never come in contact-- particularly when you're talking about swatching bloodstains or something like that, come in direct contact with the evidence item itself. So there would be no need to change your gloves in between.

Would it be possible to collect stains from a crime scene--well, of course it would be possible. But could you collect stains from a crime scene without using gloves?

If you use good practice and not handle the evidence or not allow it to come in contact with your skin, sure, you could do it without gloves.

Would there be some health concerns in doing it that way?

That's--yeah. That's true. I mean, that's one of the major reasons for wearing gloves and a lot of this protective equipment, is to protect the operator from the evidence as opposed to the other way around.

And if there were some problem at the crime scene where a person were collecting the evidence by touching the swatches with their hands instead of using tweezers, could the controls detect whether that had caused contamination?

If somebody chose to collect bloodstains by just using their fingers and then chose to use the exact same technique on the controls--that's one of the reasons for the control like I mentioned before. If the technique is the same and you're transferring information or biological material from your own hands onto the evidence, you also then would be transferring it onto the control and I would expect the control to show that.

Okay. And let's say that you decided to use this technique, if you want to call it that, of just collecting the evidence with your hands as opposed to tweezers. That would be--would that be an improper technique in your judgment?

Yes, it would be improper.

But would that improper technique cause the blood at a crime scene to somehow change into someone else's blood?

And similarly on the tweezers example, where we were talking about clean versus sterile, is there any way that using clean tweezers could change the biological information in the blood?

No.

And why is that?

Well, it's--it's--actually we touched on it off and on before in that the only thing that's going to happen to a bloodstain is, through degradation, you're going to get no result as opposed to a changing in the type or the addition--if the tweezers happen to be not as clean as you think or, you know, have become contaminated in some way, you're going to have the addition of information to it rather than the changing of the existing type that's there.

And if you were collecting a series of stains using one of these improper techniques or the improper technique of not changing gloves and using the glove itself to collect the stain as opposed to the instrument, would you expect it to somehow change the biological information in all of the stains consistently?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

In other words, if you had five stains at a crime scene, would you expect the same changes to occur to all five stains?

If your--if your gloves are dirty to the point where you are adding information to it and continuously doing this, then you're going to see--if I understand the question right, you will then see this additional or contaminant showing up in all of the samples. Potentially if you start off with a contaminant from your first sample and don't recontaminate it so to speak, eventually you would use it up and I guess your last sample may not show as much. But I don't--

Okay. When you say "Contaminant," what do you mean by that?

Well, contaminant is really anything that doesn't belong in its original situation, example being, a bloodstain that is left at the scene of a crime is a contaminant to that scene. Anything that's added to that blood after the fact is contaminant to that blood. It's something that doesn't belong.

So is there any more precise definition of contaminant that's used in the forensic science community to discuss when information is being added to a stain or to a piece of biological evidence that didn't originate in that evidence?

I'm--as far as--I mean, contaminant is what I described before. I'm not aware of any particular definitions when it comes to biological evidence. It's just the addition of something that didn't belong there to begin with.

And so it's a fairly ambiguous term? Somewhat ambiguous.

Objection. Mischaracterizes the testimony.

Overruled.

I don't know if it's ambiguous so much as there is not a forensic definition of contamination versus, you know, any other definition of contamination.

So using the definition that you gave, could you consider the blood drops themselves of a suspect deposited at a crime scene as being a contaminant?

It would be a contaminant to that location, right.

Now, as to a--the collection techniques that were used in this particular case, did you view a videotape of Andrea Mazzola demonstrating the collection process of a stain?

Yes, I did.

And did you see any problems that arose in the collection of the mock items in that case--

Objection. Vague.

Overruled.

--that could affect the collection?