2019/06/27

Forensic Magazine June 13, 2019: Case Study: First Criminal Conviction from Next-Gen DNA in Holland

Next-generation DNA sequencing has been a long time in coming, bringing with it a tidal wave of expectations and promise for better understanding the fundamental building block of life – and its relation to crime scenes of the future.

Actually getting it into the hands of forensic scientists, and then into the courtroom, has been a gradual process.

One huge leap was recently realized in Holland, where next-generation sequencing (NGS), otherwise known as massively parallel sequencing (MPS), earlier this year secured its first criminal conviction.

The breakthrough was made in an Amsterdam sexual assault case, and it was achieved through the use of the Verogen MiSeq sequencing system.

The crime was a story similar to thousands in Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world every year, according to Dutch court documents (translated through Google).

A woman was riding a bicycle around 9 p.m. on the Brettenpad, a nature trail in the western part of the city of Amsterdam, according to the transcripts.

A man emerged on a bike next to her, and grabbed her buttocks. Then he pulled her off her bike, and dragged her into some bushes alongside the trail. more