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Forensic scientists from the ESR are more than happy to ride on the back of the public awareness from the tv show - Source: Close Up
Television programmes might make DNA science look sexy, but they are in fact very unhelpful to real life scientists who use the technology to crack major crimes, a British DNA specialist says.
It has been 20 years since DNA evidence was first presented in a New Zealand court, a development that resulted in the conviction of Michael James Pengelly for the murder of an elderly Auckland woman.
Long-used in helping solve serious crimes, DNA samples in the mid-90s were increasingly used as evidence in criminal cases when DNA databanks allowed known offenders to be linked to crimes through samples held on record.
New Zealand now has just over 105,000 samples in its database, and it's about to expand.
Police powers will soon widen to take DNA samples from suspects, samples that will be included in the databank for possible use in profiling.
One of the pioneers of forensic DNA use, Dr Peter Gill, is in New Zealand to work with forensics experts at Environmental Science and Research.
He told reporters at a conference today that while television programmes had highlighted the science, they were in fact a hindrance to those presenting evidence in courtrooms.
"(CSI) doesn't really represent the way in which forensic science works. My concerns with programmes like that it gives the impression that if there is a DNA profile found at a crime scene and you have a suspect that it doesn't necessarily follow that a suspect is guilty of that crime.
"There are a lot of other things which must be considered."
The purpose of the scientist was to explain the various methods by which evidence could be transferred, he said.
"The scientist is not there to prosecute anyone. Whether the individual is found guilty or innocent has no bearing on the science."
Gill's visit coincided with the 20-year anniversary of the use of forensic of DNA in New Zealand.
In 1985, his team was the first to demonstrate that DNA could be obtained from crime stains.
Techniques developed by Dr Gill were used in the first ever case to both exclude the suspect in a murder case due to DNA profiling and to find the real killer through DNA.
That case led to the "power and principal" of DNA profiling, he says.
He also led the team which confirmed remains found in Russia were of the Russian royal family, the Romanovs, murdered in 1918, and a subsequent investigation which disproved the claim of Anna Anderson to be the Duchess Anastasia, the alleged sole survivor of the massacre.
Also speaking at the conference was Dr Sally Ann Harbison, who works as the science and technical leader of the forensic biology group of ESR at Mt Albert in Auckland, where she has been carrying out forensic DNA and crime scene work since 1988.
During the mid-1990s DNA was collected from a number of serious rape cases.
It eventually connected high profile criminals Joseph Thompson and Malcom Rewa to crimes, she says.
"It was the use of forensic DNA evidence that we were developing at that time that was very important to linking together the crimes and then finally linking the suspects to the crimes."
In New Zealand, for every 100 crimes 65 were linked to a particular person, she says.
The total number of links reported back to police to date was 15,000, Harbison says.
Gill says scientific developments with DNA were becoming more and more "sensitive".
"Forensic science is still maturing - there's been a massive expansion in recent years."
In order to share information across countries, there needed to be common standards, he said, and there was a call for this to happen.
