Victim: Dennis Dolinger Perp: Raymond Anthony Jenkins Location: Washington, D.C. Date: June 4, 1999 Jenkins Identified in DNA match: Dec. 2000 Trial: June 27, 2006 After deliberating for almost two days, a D.C. jury convicted Raymond A. Jenkins of murder in the stabbing death of a prominent community activist in 1999. Jurors returned a verdict in June 2006, convicting Jenkins on all counts, including felony murder, in the 1999 death of Dennis Dolinger. Dolinger, 51, was stabbed more than 20 times through the skull with a screwdriver in his Southeast home. Another man was caught using Dolinger’s credit cards and initially charged for the murder. He could not be matched to any of the blood at the scene and the murder charge was dropped. Jenkins was linked to the case later that year by a "cold hit," where an unidentified DNA sample is compared to a database of genetic profiles. The link to Jenkins was found through Virginia’s DNA database, and his arrest was made in January 2000 while he was serving a prison term for burglary. It was during lengthy pretrial arguments that the defense questioned the reliability and qualification of the DNA evidence against Jenkins, which Judge Rhonda Reid Winston ruled inadmissible in April 2005. The case moved to the Court of Appeals, where judges ruled that there was no scientific controversy and that the DNA was reliable evidence — laying a new legal foundation. The case was sent back for trial to Winston’s courtroom in early March. Even with the DNA evidence back under consideration, the jury reported a deadlock in mid-April, and as a result Winston declared a mistrial.

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