To preserve forensic samples, clothes that might have some evidence on should not be washed.
He wanted to wash his hands, which were covered with the blood of his victim, but officers wanted to take forensic samples to help establish his guilt.
But the judge said he was not satisfied that there was a scientifically reliable match, and described the handling of some forensic samples as "slapdash" and "cavalier".
Her main responsibilities would include assessing whether detainees are fit to be interviewed, carrying out clinical assessments of victims of crime and taking forensic samples.
The Syrians offered no such information to the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors before they left Syria with a trove of forensic samples on Aug. 31.
Bill Amos, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Cambridge, cautioned that forensic samples of DNA, such as the ones being examined by Sykes, were always difficult to deal with.
"No other state tests the forensic samples in ways Victoria does, so we don't have a uniform picture of what is happening, but all evidence from national studies suggests stable use across the country," he said.
Bodies found afterward were badly decomposed and were considered to pose a threat of disease or water contamination, he said, so the government ordered them quickly buried or cremated after forensic samples were taken.
By the end of last month, both bodies had been exhumed and autopsied a second time, and scores of new forensic samples had been collected from the two corpses.
But according to prosecutors' notes and medical records, the physician did not take the full array of forensic samples from the woman, and the two samples that were taken were not submitted for genetic checks.
They rang the historic forensic samples lab and said, "Do you have any samples from the postmortem of this unidentified female?" As luck would have it, almost at the back of a drawer, they found what I believe to be a vial of blood.
