As many of you know, I've been a Criminalist at the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory for over 30 years.  Most of that time has been spent working on cases where the examination and analysis of evidence for biological matter has been requested.  The majority of tho se cases were sexual assault investigations.  Although there has been a sign ificant evolution in the forensic analysis of sexual assault evidence over that time (from ABO blood typing to DNA analysis), the act of sexual assault has 

changed very little.  One thing that became increasingly frustrating to me over that time was the lack of my ability to detect the presence of semen in oral samples taken from rape victims.  Although there were many good reasons for this (chief among them was the lengthy time interval between the assault and the time of the sexual assault examination), there were instances where I had high expectations that I would detect traces of semen in the victim's oral samples.  This was because the victim indicted that oral sex had occurred, that the perpetrator had ejaculated in the victim's mouth, that the victim had sought treatment in a short amount of time after the assault and the victim was treated by a S.A.N.E.  Still I found no semen in all those cases. 

 That was until last September when I identified several sperm on the oral smear of a rape victim who sought treatment at Manchester's Elliot Hospital.  The sample was taken by S.A.N.E. Johanna Rodriguez who, like all of you, was just doing her job.  So, if you've ever said to yourself; "Am I collecting this sample correctly?  I get little or no positive feedback on what I do."   This was an example of really good sample collection.  I know that all of you do a really great S.A.N.E. job day after day and I apologize if it seems that you only hear from us (me) when mistakes are made but otherwise I feel like I'd be complimenting everyone all the time and I fear my appreciation would lack credibility and be meaningless.  So, in future Corners, I'll endeavor to recognize other S.A.N.E.s for "just doing their job" too.  Kudos Johanna!