Expert Witness Blog
Juan Luna and his alleged accomplice Jim Degorski are charged with killing seven people in the Palatine Brown’s Chicken and Pasta murders 14 years ago. However, DNA expert Karl Reich told jurors DNA found at the crime scene can not be scientifically matched to Luna because of mishandling and inadequate testing. “You have to handle (the evidence) properly in order to get the right results … in order to have faith in those results,” Reich said.
The DNA match was based on nine points, but Reich said a 13-point match would have been more thorough and that as many as 1 million people in the U.S. could match those same nine points. As reported in the Daily Herald, a bird expert tesified on Monday regarding chicken bones from the crime scene.