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Blood From Mosquito Traps Car Thief
Frosty Piss writes "Police in Finland have made an arrest for car theft based on a DNA sample taken from the blood found inside a mosquito. 'A police patrol carried out an inspection of the car and they noticed a mosquito that had sucked blood. It was sent to the laboratory for testing, which showed the blood belonged to a man who was in the police registers,' a police officer told reporters. The suspect, who has been interrogated, has insisted he did not steal the car, saying he had hitchhiked and was given a lift by a man driving the car. I'm wondering if the suspect should have denied any association with the car at all. After all, who knows where that mosquito had been?"
Grissom from the original CSI was the bug guy...infact in a few episodes they got DNA from maggots.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Someone who disapproves of a witch hunt?! He must be one of them! Tie him to an anker and see if this wickedness floats or not!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
It was enough to question the guy, who admitted having been in the car, so the mosquito has proven to be a positive lead. Of course, the mosquito does not explain WHY the guy was in the car, but he could have left behind his wallet with ID and still used the same story.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Currently the system consist of "known associates" of the police. In practice you can get included if you are accused of a crime with potential punishment over six months in jail. And in Finland you can't get that from minor stuff like stealing a tv or downloading mp3's.
by no means should this even remotely count towards conviction as that mosquito could have come from almost anywhere
Huh? It's called "circumstantial evidence".
1. Car was stolen.
2. They identified someone who was not the owner, and associated him with the car.
There could be a million completely reasonable stories about how it arrived there, so it's not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". However, it is real evidence, and the jury can weigh it along with everything else.
Similarly, if you find a murder weapon in someone's car, they might not have done it. Maybe they are being framed. Maybe it was stolen, used, and put back. However, that's for the jury to sort out.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Come now... as a fellow attorney you know better than to mislead the proles.
That particular legal proposition dates back to the reign of King Canute in 994-1035.
In more modern times i refer you to the 1762 treatise by Sir Michael Foster, Fosters Crown Law.
As your legal training has no doubt informed you, British Common Law is where most of our law
evolved from.
nope, they're called "munkit" (plural, singular is munkki). It also means "monk" in finnish, as you can see from the link.
Firstly, as people have said previously in the thread, the mosquito digests the DNA in the blood within hours of eating it. That implies that the suspect was in the car recently. Secondly, the DNA provides a lead, even if it cannot later be used as actual evidence.
Yes you do except (under certain circumstances) a jury can adversely infer things if you use it. However, no conviction can be wholly based on silence.
In other words, the jury is allowed to think "he's not telling us why he was at the murder scene, he's got something to hide". I expect juries in the USA do this subconsciously (even if they're not meant to). I see no problem with officially codifying the areas where inferences such as these are acceptible.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
It's interesting to see that Yahoo News says it's quoting AFP on this one. What would be more interesting to hear if this is actually a AFP "news" or not. - And if so, it would be very interesting to hear who on AFP was drunk enough to come up with this... =)
Unfortunately stealing a car for joyriding in Finland is not a very big offence. Actually it's not even called stealing, but "unlawful use of motor vehicle". And I dare say the police would even have time to check a car's interior, let alone hunt for a mosquito. I've had my car stolen once, and luckily recovered. I called up the police after it was recovered, and they didn't have time to come by to have a look at it, let alone dust the car for prints. - So, no cool CSI...
And BTW. It's December here in Finland (like I guess it's in most parts of the world), and the mosquitoes died by September...
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...