Criminalist Details DNA & Blood Evidence In Hawaii Hiking Trail Attempted Murder Trial

Michelle Amorin is a criminalist with the Honolulu Police Department in Hawaii who analyzed evidence in the attempted murder case against a man accused of trying to murder his wife on the Pali Puka Trail last year.

Amorin testified in Gerhardt Konig's trial today (Friday, March 27). Deputy Prosecutor Joel Garner questioned her in direct-examination.

01:07 "How many trainings have you attended since 2015?"
"I've attended over 30 different trainings."
01:14 "And can you briefly describe the specialized training that you received?"
"These trainings were either web based or in person, trainings that I received from different organizations, and they covered topics such as DNA mixture interpretation and the standards for DNA testing."

07:16 "What does it mean to be accredited by the a NAB?"
"It means that the lab is 100% compliant with national and international standards in forensic testing."

07:57 "Does the HPD fbU have standard operating procedures for DNA testing?"
"Yes."
"And going forward, can I use the acronym SOPs for standard operating procedures?"
"Sure, yes."
"Why does HPD have SOPs?"
"HPD has SOPs to ensure that the analysts are using validated procedures that, again, will produce quality work."

11:56 "DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, and you can think of DNA as the blueprint for life, because it directs the growth and functions of all living things. In humans, half of our DNA comes from our mothers and half from our fathers, and each individual's DNA is unique, making it a useful tool for human identification."

13:33 "Serology is a test that we use to determine if a possible biological stain is blood, semen or saliva."

15:37 "I will take samples from my items of evidence, and they will go through a series of lab procedures, and at the end, I will obtain DNA profiles for those samples."
"And how many steps are there?"
"There are five."

20:45 "So STR stands for a short tandem repeat, and you can think of DNA as a really, really long strand of four different colored beads. And at specific regions on this strand, the beads will repeat in pattern. And these repeating patterns are what the are the STRS. So those are the sections that I'm looking at that make up the DNA profile."

21:57 "There are three different regions in the DNA profile that are sex markers, and these will help me determine if there is a male or female presence in it."

25:33 "So just so we're clear in terms of your testimony today, can you tell us the extent of the analysis that you're testifying to?"
"I will be presenting conclusions on the presence of blood, the presence of human DNA. I will also tell you the number of contributors, or the number of individuals in this DNA profile, as well as sometimes, I will give you whether it's a male or female contributor, and I can also provide you with exclusions."

26:48 "In this case, I tested a t shirt, shorts, swabs from the crime scene, two reference buccal swabs and a rock."

29:06 "I'll go to the evidence room and request certain items, and the evidence custodians will retrieve the item and sign them out to me, and I will check the packaging to make sure it's intact and the seals are intact before I sign out that I receive the items."

30:56 "What did you actually physically do to the rock?"
"So what I did is I took samples from the rock. So again, I took swabs, and I took a swabbing of either the stains or the unstained area."

32:11 "the results were screening for the presence of human blood was positive, and screening for the presence of human DNA was positive."

34:18 "Were you able to obtain a DNA profile from the unstained area of the rock?"
"Yes."
"How many contributors?"
"Two."
"And because there were two contributors, did you determine male or female?"
"No."

39:02 blood swab: "And were you able to obtain a DNA profile from the swab?"
"Yes."
"Was this a single source sample, or was this a mixture?"
"Single source from one individual?"
"And as it was a single source from one individual, were you able to determine a gender?"
"Yes, it was female."

42:57 blood stain on bush:
"screening for the presence of human blood and human DNA testing were positive."
"Were you able to obtain a DNA profile from this swap?"
"Yes."
"Was this a single source profile or a mixture?"
"This one was a single source profile."
"Okay. And were you able to determine the gender of the contributor?"
"Yes."
"What was that gender?"
"Female."

44:46 t-shirt photograph

50:08 exterior right armpit blood stain is multiple sources

56:17 shorts: "I sampled six different areas."

01:00:10 "This is the front of the shorts, and there's three different areas I sampled."

01:07: 12 "When you say you take cuttings from these items, how big of a hole do you leave?"
"A small hole"

01:11:12 Gerhardt's reference sample shows he's excluded from a lot

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