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    • DNA hearing in Colts Neck murders underway as Caneiro trial prepares
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    DNA hearing in Colts Neck murders underway as Caneiro trial prepares

    Online Niel Posted on

    FREEHOLD As Paul Caneiro awaits trial in 2018 for the murders of four of his family members, the fate of the state-of-the-art software used to analyze the DNA evidence against him is now before Monmouth County’s chief judge.

    Years in the making, a preliminary hearing to test the reliability of software that deviates from traditional DNA analysis methods took place Tuesday before Superior Court Judge Marc C. Lemieux.

    The final hurdle to Caneiro’s trial in the murders of his brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew, the hearing will determine the admissibility of DNA evidence derived from computer software known as STRmix, which uses a method known as probabilistic genotyping to generate DNA profiles.

    The outcome of the hearing will have statewide implications beyond the Caneiro case, as the New Jersey State Police recently began using STRmix in its DNA lab.

    At the start of the hearing, Lemieux gave an overview of the STRmix software, which was developed by the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research and South Australian Forensic Sciences.

    “This software uses probabilistic genotyping analysis to interpret mixed DNA profiles that are often found at crime scenes,” said Lemieux.

    “By leveraging statistical methods, the STRmix software generates millions of hypothetical DNA profiles, evaluates the strength of these profiles against the probative evidence, and determines the most likely combination of profiles that can explain the DNA profile,” said Lemieux.

    “While other jurisdictions in the United States have admitted evidence tested with STRmix software, no court in the state of New Jersey has done so,” Lemieux said.

    Caneiro’s attorneys from the Public Defender’s Office in 2022 filed a motion seeking to exclude the STRmix evidence, but it took years for their experts to be allowed to examine the program’s proprietary source code under an order negotiated protection.

    Caneiro, 57, of Ocean Township, is expected to go on trial early next year for the murders of his brother, Keith, 50, sister-in-law, Jennifer, 45, niece, Sophia, 8, and his nephew, Jesse, 11 years old. at Keith Caneiro’s Colts Neck mansion.

    Emergency workers responding to a smoldering house fire on November 21, 2018, discovered the bodies.

    Keith Caneiro, found on the front lawn, had been shot four times in the head and once in the back. Jennifer Caneiro and the two children, found inside the home, had been stabbed repeatedly and badly burned. Jennifer Caneiro was also shot in the head.

    Hours earlier, Ocean Township firefighters responded to Paul Caniero’s home to put out a fire there that authorities say he wanted to throw off investigators and make it seem like his entire family was being targeted by violent criminals .

    Authorities say Paul Caneiro committed the murders after Keith, his business partner, discovered he was stealing from the businesses they jointly owned.

    The first witness at Tuesday’s preliminary hearing on the DNA evidence was Monica Ghannam, a forensic scientist with the Union County Prosecutor’s crime lab in Westfield.

    Ghannam said the lab began using the STRmix program exclusively for DNA analysis in 2017.

    Before that, the lab used a traditional method of DNA analysis known as random match probability, which was limited to analyzing mixtures of DNA from one or two sources and occasionally a mixture of three people, Ghannam said.

    “Now we can evaluate four-person mixes, when we could barely evaluate three-person mixes before,” Ghannam said.

    Nicole Wallace, Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor, asked Ghannam to evaluate STRmix’s reliability.

    Ghannam replied, “very high.”

    Ghannam explained that the random match probability method generates a statistic about the probability that a match to a DNA profile can be found in the general population, while a ratio used by STRmix compares the DNA profile to the probability that it can include or exclude a person of interest. from the sample.

    Another advantage of the STRmix technology is that it can remove the profile of a known contributor to a DNA mixture, so what’s left of the mixture can be better analyzed, Ghannam explained.

    The STRmix technology was validated through a process of comparing its results with results obtained from manual analysis of DNA profiles of known contributors, Ghannam explained.

    When questioned by Christopher Godin of the Public Defender’s Office, Ghannam admitted that she was not a software developer, was not involved in the development of STRmix, and had never seen the program’s source code.

    The hearing is expected to last several weeks.

    Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, has covered crimes, court cases, legal issues and nearly every major crime trial that has hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at [email protected].

    Online Niel
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