Melissa Hypes, a forensic scientist at the Virginia Department of Forensic Science’s west office in Roanoke, handled the DNA swabs taken from Addie and Foran when they were sent to her lab in August 2014. She found a match between the vaginal swab from the dog and cheek swab from Foran and she testified that the sample followed all protocols.

“To come into the lab, you must be signed in and accompanied. You also wouldn’t leave evidence out in an unsecured refrigerator,” Austin said. “You find that important to keep the evidence’s integrity and make it suitable for testing. Let’s assume the evidence breached your policy. You wouldn’t test it would you?”

Hypes said the lab could “possibly” test samples that had not followed the requirements of her lab prior to being received by her staff. She said many DNA samples used as evidence sit unsealed before they are collected by police.

“A particular piece of evidence could lay out and be exposed to many people before it gets brought to our lab,” Hypes said. “Only in the lab does it get the scrutiny. Degradation is the breaking down of the cells. It doesn’t change the DNA, just the amount I can test.”

Austin said nowhere in Hypes’ report was there a direct accusation that the semen belonged to Foran.