On Thursday, Baltimore City prosecutors intend to try a 1985 murder case.
At the same time, Baltimore County prosecutors are planning closing arguments in a 1993 rape.
These cases are finally being heard this week, but not because of major backlogs or a lengthy series of postponements.
They were solved only recently, thanks to DNA evidence.
“To be able to go back and solve these cold cases is truly amazing,” Johns Hopkins criminologist Doug Ward said of old crimes recently solved in the Baltimore area. “Since fingerprints, DNA has become the most important technology for solving crimes.”
Often thought of as a tool of defense attorneys, DNA evidence is becoming increasingly useful for police to solve old cases as national databases build, allowing law enforcement to make matches to unsolved crimes, Ward said.
“The databases have to be built up with enough samples before you start getting hits,” Ward said. “It?s taken a while to get to the point when you can solve these cases.”
Deoxyribonucleic acid evidence was first presented in a criminal case in the United States in 1987 in Florida and has since evolved to allow the detection of DNA profiles in thousands of cases to identify the perpetrator of crimes and exonerate those who are wrongly convicted.
In Baltimore City, Orrell Andrew Youmanis was indicted Jan. 4, nearly 22 years after police said he raped and killed a 26-year-old nurse and dumped her body in a wooded area.
Youmanis, 50, was charged after police matched swabs from the victim to him using the FBI?s Combined DNA Index System.
Youmanis? trial is expected to begin Thursday.
In Baltimore County, Thomas Carroll, 38, was indicted on Aug. 28 and accused of a 14-year-old rape on Feb. 20, 1993.
Police also arrested him after they found a DNA match. Carroll?s trial is slated to end Thursday.
“Say what you want about the intrusion of DNA testing into the lives of people, in the long run it?s been beneficial to society,” University of Baltimore criminologist Jeffrey Ian Ross said. “I wouldn?t be surprised if in the next 10 years the use of DNA expands to job applications to prescreen candidates for criminal background investigations. With any kind of technology, it can have its good sides and bad sides. So far, it looks like it?s been used in every sort of pro-social way.”
