dna evidence

For those who have not heard of this, a familial DNA search is "a search by law enforcement in DNA databases for genetic information indicating a relative of a person they seek to identify. When a search for an exact match to a DNA sample comes up fruitless, a search of familial DNA may bring...

Fifteen year old Leah Freeman was murdered in 2000 in the state of Oregon, but the body lay undiscovered for more than a month. Her eighteen year old boyfriend Nicholas McGuffin was convicted of manslaughter in 2011 on a 10-2 jury vote. There were no eyewitnesses to the crime, and there no...

One of Australia's most famous cold cases, The Claremont Serial Killings, has just had a major breakthrough. Bradley Robert Edwards has been charged with two murders as well as several other offences, and may still be charged with a third murder, the presumed 3rd victim disappeared in 1996 and...

So Daniel Holtzclaw is the police officer charged and convicted with the rape. Multiple women accused him. I think he was sentenced raping and/or assaulting 13 of them. It seemed pretty open and shut for me, kind of in the same Bill Cosby way... if there is that much smoke there is probably...

Ok. People know about this stuff better then I do, so here I turn. I was watching some stories on the upcoming anniversary of the murder of Jon Bennett Ramsey. It's been almost 20 years. The issue I am wondering about is this. Apparently there was DNA of an unknown male that may belong to the...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/supreme-court-says-police-can-take-dna-samples.html So they compare taking DNA to fingerprinting and say they can take it after being arrested for a "serious offense" "supported by probable cause". I actually have no problem with this.

Hank Skinner was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two adult sons on the night of New Year's Eve in 1993. He said that he was passed out on the couch. Skinner wished to have someone test knives and a jacket found at the scene at the time of his trial, among other items, but his...

There has just been a much publicised case in Denmark involving a serial rapist who also killed two of his victims. He was convicted largely based on DNA evidence but there were other evidences like foot and handprints. He has during the whole trial maintained his innocense and when faced with...

Hank Skinner has just been granted a stay of execution for the 1993 murders of his girlfriend Twila Busby and two adult sons. He and his attorneys wish to test items such as fingernail scrapings from his girlfriend, the rape kit, the windbreaker jacket, and the murder weapon. It is pertinent...

Deal could lead to release of West Memphis Three http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/aug/18/plea-deal-release-west-memphis-three/

Executed murderer may have been innocent of the crime after the only evidence (a strand of hair) linking him to the crime scene was found not to belong to him. This was also the last capital case involving George W. Bush, who was governor at the time...

It seems that DNA evidence is being questioned around the world. A very reputable university in Australia has started a campaign to free "wrongly convicted" criminals. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/21/2777679.htm?section=justin So is DNA evidence reliable, or subject to...

I've googled until my fingertips fell off, and I'm no closer to an answer than yesterday. This question is prompted by an old rerun of Law & Order. The Pathologist linked blood from a crime scene to a suspect through Mitochondrial DNA (or so she said). Is this possible? Was she linking it...

Prosecutors Block Access to DNA Testing for Inmates Eyewitness identification You can't double-check, because we're convinced that we've got the right guy. This is not just stupid, but evil. :bwall

Some things are beyond weird. On April 25th 2007, a female police officer was killed and another officer wounded severely near Heilbronn, Germany. DNA traces found at the crime scene matched those of an unknown person, female, whose DNA had been found at several other crime scenes since 1993...

I'm not sure if anyone is still following this case. As of September 11, the judge denied a new trial for Damien Echols based on new DNA tests performed on evidence found at the crime scene. From what I've read, the new DNA evidence recovered showed that it was mainly from the victims, yet...

A bank robber in Mobile, AL used latex gloves while binding the teller with duct tape. The glove tips tore off and remained on the duct tape. DNA was obtained from the glove tips. The DNA experts testified that the chances of the DNA coming from anyone else besides the defendant were 1 in 2.2...

NPR has a news story up this morning: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90172724&ft=1&f=1012 About an all-too-familiar situation, a man who has served 27 years for a rape/murder found innocent by DNA evidence. What's more to the point is that this case appears to be only...

US scientists: Dr Crippen was innocent A team of American scientists have found, by comparing DNA from the body to that from Mrs Crippen's living relatives, that the body in Dr. Crippen's cellar wasn't that of his wife. So he was innocent after all! Oh, hang on, maybe not:

Finally some news in the West Memphis Three case. For fourteen years, three young men (two were juveniles at the time of their incarceration) have been sitting behind bars. One, Damien Echols, is on death row. Three young children were murdered in the most unthinkable way. Six lives, lost or...

if an expert witness gives a ludicrous expert opinion which results in a conviction, then should they be held professionally accountable for the statement merely because they said it in good faith? does the fact that a conviction resulted play any role? these questions inspired by case in the...

From the Sports Illustrated article: "Failed to connect" is a poor choice of words here, since the DNA evidence excludes any team member tested from being the donor of the exemplar. There is a small error probability with a positive test - one in a certain billion may share the same alleles...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060112/ap_on_re_us/execution_dna;_ylt=AjuYihZpRnNvSsXSEW1r5zys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-