Right now DNA is still young; it's not a there's still a lot of room to grow, there's new technologies and new advancements that's going to make it more even more powerful, so there needs to be steps to protect those key pieces of evidence. I know you hear about DNA testing on shell fire or spent shell casings right now there's not a lot of luck or not a lot of results on fired shell casings attaining DNA profiles however there's new technologies that are out there that one day we may be able to get DNA off of those fired shell casings. It's critical that an agency has evidence retention policies in place technology is advancing. Items of evidence that we thought 20 years ago we couldn't use and examine for potential evidence we're getting profiles we're getting information identifying suspects, so it's critical that these agencies put into place policies that protect that evidence ,for not only current cases but future cases as well. Evidence retention is critical when you get into this area the landscape has changed technology has moved forward; RFLP has moved to mini STR and because of that, your retention policy has to move with it. In order to utilize this new technology you've got to have the evidence and your evidence retention policy has to reflect these changes whether it's to look at cold case hits or whether it's to use an exoneration. without the evidence you don't have anything. Evidence retention are our keeping key pieces of evidence that help me solve crimes I think is critical. I know in our lab we had often times but even before DNA came on the scene our ulcerologists were making cuttings and saving those items; they knew that technology was advancing. Those items were kept and preserved and we were able to go back a lot of them through NIJ grants go back and work those old cases and actually solve crimes where the technology at the time wasn't present to do so.
