BACKGROUND: "A trial date for the Colts Neck family murders case is expected to be set in November, Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Christopher Swendeman said. Paul Caneiro, 57, of Ocean Township, has been awaiting trial in the case since 2018, and is accused of killing his brother, his brother’s wife, and their children. According to authorities, Caniero’s brother Keith, Keith’s wife, Jennifer, and their two children were found dead at Keith’s home in Colts Neck on Nov. 20, 2018, when a fire broke out at their home. Keith Caneiro had been shot to death, authorities said. That fire was discovered a few hours after two fires were started at Paul Caneiro’s home at 27 Tilton Drive in Ocean Township. Though Caneiro’s home was damaged from the fire, Caneiro, his wife Susan, and his two daughters all escaped uninjured. On Nov. 21, Paul Caneiro was taken into custody by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office and accused of setting his own home on fire. He would later be charged with four counts of first-degree murder and two counts of first-degree felony murder amongst other charges for the deaths of his brother and his brother’s family. According to Swendeman, Superior Court Judge Marc C. Lemieux intends to set a trial date for Caneiro on Nov. 12, and expects jury selection to begin either in late February or early March. Last week, Lemieux rejected a request from defense attorneys to extend deadlines for experts to submit reports on DNA evidence being challenged by the defense, the Asbury Park Press reported. According to the report, Caneiro’s defense first filed to have a hearing challenging the admissibility of DNA evidence in March 2022. Delays in the hearing taking place have been the only thing standing in the way of Caneiro’s trial, the report said. "This court can't allow experts, whether they are paid or they're doing it on a voluntary basis, to continue to slow down this court's process of getting to a hearing date,'' Lemieux said, according to the report."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: In its challenge of STRmix the Public Defender's Office has pointed out limitations in the software's ability to analyze mixtures of related persons because relatives share what is known as alleles, which are sequences of DNA a person inherits from each parent. The outcome of the hearing will have statewide implications for STRmix because the state police is now using it and because it has never before been challenged or deemed reliable in a New Jersey court."
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STORY: "New technology found slain nephew's DNA on Paul Caneiro's jeans, expert testifies," by Reporter Kathleen Hopkins, published by Asbury Park Press, on November 19, 2024. (Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties.)
GIST: "A stain on the inside of a pair of jeans found in Paul Caneiro's basement after his brother's family was murdered in 2018 at first yielded no useful information for investigators when it was examined using the traditional method of DNA analysis, a state DNA expert testified Monday
But, when the DNA extracted from the stain was re-examined last year and run through a cutting-edge computer software program that the New Jersey State Police first began using in 2022, a portion of it was revealed to be the DNA of Caneiro's slain nephew, 11-year-old Jesse Caneiro, state police DNA forensic scientist Christine Schlenker testified.
Schlenker took the witness stand at an ongoing pretrial hearing on the admissibility of DNA evidence at Paul Caneiro's upcoming trial. Caneiro, 57, of Ocean Township, is charged with the murders of his brother Keith, 50, sister-in-law, Jennifer, 45, niece, Sophia, 8, and nephew, Jesse, whose bodies were found during a fire at Keith Caneiro's Colts Neck mansion on Nov. 21, 2018.
In order to rule the DNA evidence admissible, Superior Court Judge Marc C. Lemieux, Monmouth County's assignment judge, must find the new computer software program known as STRmix yields reliable results and that the method it utilizes to calculate them is generally accepted in the scientific community.
STRmix uses a method known as probabilistic genotyping, which was designed to analyze small amounts and complex mixtures of DNA that often can't be analyzed by traditional methods.
Probabilistic genotyping deviates from the traditional DNA analysis method of random match probability, which generates a statistic on the probability a match to a DNA profile can be found in the general population.
Probabilistic genotyping instead analyzes mixtures to which more than one person have contributed to generate a "likelihood ratio'' that a person of interest can either be included or excluded as a contributor to the mixture
Schlenker testified that the DNA from the stain on the inside of the jeans found in Paul Caneiro's basement was a mixture of DNA from two persons. The STRmix program found it was 2.73 septillion times more likely than not that Jesse Caneiro contributed DNA to that two-person mixture, she said.
STRmix also concluded it was 53 billion times more likely than not that Paul Caneiro did not contribute to the mixture, Schlenker said.
The jeans and other items were seized from Paul Caneiro's home after authorities allege he set fire to the dwelling to throw off investigators and make it look like the entire Caneiro family was being targeted by violent criminals. .
Authorities allege Paul Caneiro first set a slow-burning fire at his brother's home in attempt to mask the murders of Keith, who was shot four times in the head and once in the back, as well as Jennifer and the two children, who were repeatedly stabbed and badly burned. Jennifer Caneiro also was shot in the head.
The profile of the DNA mixture on the inside of the jeans also was compared to the DNA of Jennifer, Keith and Sophia Caneiro and Sean Edson, a firefighter who cut himself battling the blaze at Paul Caneiro's home. Jennifer and Keith Caneiro and Edson were excluded as possible donors to the sample, while the comparison to Sophia's DNA was "uninformative,'' Schlenker said.
Schlenker said she used STRmix to analyze DNA from the inside collar of a long-sleeved shirt found in the defendant's home and concluded the DNA was that of a two-person mixture and that Paul Caneiro was 110 million times more likely than not the contributor of the major portion of that mixture.
When the two items were analyzed in 2018 before the state police lab started using STRmix, the DNA was determined to be "not good quantity and quality for comparison, so no comparisons could be made,'' Schlenker said.
Schlenker said she analyzed a third item in the Caneiro case, a label on the pair of jeans from the defendant's home, but detected no DNA on it so no further analysis was performed.
Last week, the judge heard testimony from a DNA analyst from Bode Technology, a private forensic lab in Lorton, Virginia, to which the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office sent items in the Caneiro case to be tested before the state police began using STRmix. The analyst, Danielle Reed, testified that DNA from another area on the jeans was a mixture of DNA from three people. The STRmix analysis of the mixture revealed there was very strong support that Paul and Sophia Caneiro contributed to the mixture, Reed testified.
Before Schlenker took the stand Monday, Jennifer Thayer, director of the state police DNA lab, testified about the process undertaken to validate the reliability of the STRmix software before the state police began using it.
The process entailed creating mixtures of DNA from known persons and running it through the program to verify the results were correct.
"STRmix is able to do more with these mixtures than we could previously, and everything correlated as expected,'' Thayer testified.
But, questioned by Christopher Godin of the state Public Defender's Office, Thayer conceded the lab's validation studies included "very minimal'' consideration of how the software handled DNA of related persons and only contained samples of a pair of offspring in the studies.
"We have since decided to do some relative studies, but they're underway,'' Thayer testified.
In challenge of STRmix, the Public Defender's Office has pointed out limitations in the software's ability to analyze mixtures of related persons because relatives share what is known as alleles, which are sequences of DNA a person inherits from each parent.
The outcome of the hearing will have statewide implications for STRmix because the state police is now using it and because it has never before been challenged or deemed reliable in a New Jersey court."
The entire story can be read at:
New technology found slain nephew's DNA on Caneiro's pants: expert
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
- SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
