NEW YORK, May 16 (UPI) -- A pioneer in DNA profiling resigned from the New York Medical Examiner's Office amid questions about her work, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
Dr. Theresa Caragine resigned April 19, the newspaper said. She is one of three employees to quit under fire in recent weeks.
A lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, resigned after charges were made of botched testing in rape cases. She has denied any wrongdoing. Mecki Prinz, the director of forensic biology, was suspended and then resigned in the same scandal.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Singer, in response to a lawyer's questioning of lab results in a criminal case, said that Caragine failed to follow lab rules for dealing with disagreements in two cases. Caragine allegedly simply overruled results by subordinates instead of referring the difference of opinion to her boss.
"Dr. Caragine is a highly respected professional in her field who made an error in judgment in not following protocol," a spokesman for the medical examiner, Steven Reed, said. "That does not affect the strength of the science or the forensic findings. We are confident that cases will not be unduly affected by her departure."
Caragine and another scientist in the office, Dr. Adele Mitchell, created the Forensic Statistical Tool. The method, still controversial, provides a way of determining if there is a high probability an individual's DNA is included in a sample coming from a number of sources.
