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Attorneys for historic double-murder suspect Leonard Cochrane will make their case later this month about why genetic family tree tracing breached their consumer’s Constitution rights.
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Protection lawyer James MacLeod appeared within the Calgary Courtroom of King’s Bench on Friday to set a five-day voir dire, or trial inside a trial, to debate the legality of the method.
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Decide Keith Yamauchi dominated earlier this month that MacLeod and co-counsel Balfour Der might look at witnesses concerned in the usage of investigative genetic family tree to hyperlink Cochrane’s DNA to the crime scene.
Yamauchi earlier dominated the protection had not met its onus to mount a Constitution problem on the difficulty.
However following a Supreme Courtroom determination final month which dominated that an evidentiary software ought to solely be refused if it “clearly frivolous,” Yamauchi mentioned the attorneys might cross-examine key witnesses investigation.
Yamauchi mentioned lead homicide investigator Det. Ken Carriere and two genetic genealogists might be interviewed concerning the methodology utilized in investigative genetic family tree (IGG), which helped establish Cochrane as a suspect in a double chilly case homicide.
Carriere used IGG to add a DNA profile that matched the crime scene of the July 11, 1994, deadly capturing of Calgarians Barry Buchart and Trevor Deakins, and examine it to genetic family tree databases.
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The investigation discovered people with comparable DNA in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the genetic genealogists then constructing household timber tracing again to the newest widespread ancestors of the fabric discovered on the crime scene.
The genetic tracing led investigators to the male youngsters of Ignatius Cochrane and Mary Pomroy because the probably supply of the DNA profile of blood discovered on the crime scene.
Cochrane, one of many couple’s 4 sons, then grew to become a suspect and was arrested in December 2020.
He’s charged with two counts of first-degree homicide within the deaths of Buchart and Deakins, who have been fatally shot when two masked people burst into a house on tenth Avenue SE.
The listening to takes place for the week of June 19 to 23.
KMartin@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @KMartinCourts
