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The Case Against DNA
Hugh Pickens writes "Thanks to fast-paced television crime shows such as CSI, we have come to regard DNA evidence as incontestable. But BBC reports that David Butler has every right to be cynical about the use of DNA evidence by the police. Butler spent eight months in prison, on remand, facing murder charges after his DNA was allegedly found on the victim. 'I think in the current climate [DNA] has made police lazy,' says Butler. 'It doesn't matter how many times someone like me writes to them, imploring they look at the evidence... they put every hope they had in the DNA result.' The police had accused Butler of murdering a woman, Anne Marie Foy, in 2005 — his DNA sample was on record after he had willingly given it to them as part of an investigation into a burglary at his mother's home some years earlier. But Butler has a rare skin condition, which means he sheds flakes of skin, leaving behind much larger traces of DNA than the average person. Butler worked as a taxi driver, and so it was possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money or another person, onto the murder victim. The case eventually went to trial and Butler was acquitted after CCTV evidence allegedly placing Butler in the area where the murder took place was disproved. Professor Allan Jamieson, head of the Glasgow-based Forensic Institute, has become a familiar thorn in the side of prosecutors seeking to rely on DNA evidence and has appeared as an expert witness for the defense in several important DNA-centered trials, most notably that of Sean Hoey, who was cleared of carrying out the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people. Jamieson's main concern about the growing use of DNA in court cases is that a number of important factors — human error, contamination, simple accident — can suggest guilt where there is none. 'Does anyone realize how easy it is to leave a couple of cells of your DNA somewhere?' says Jamieson. 'You could shake my hand and I could put that hand down hundreds of miles away and leave your cells behind. In many cases, the question is not "Is it my DNA?", but 'How did it get there?"'"
Contaminated DNA samples can even lead to imaginary super criminals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
The police will try to send any kind of weak shit that they can to the district attorney, because they can then mark the case solved and blame the DA or the Grand Jury should they fail to indict. The police commanders are happy because they get the closed case stats, the prosecutors stay happy because they don't take weak shit cases to trial, so their conviction rate stays up.
Everyone else loses. The whole world shines shit and declares it to be gold.
Also, this doesn't sound like a failure of DNA, this sounds like a failure of the detectives to properly interpret trace evidence.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The MythBusters need to do a show on DNA
Let's face it, our educational standards have dropped to such a low point that most juries in America can be swayed by any motivated and well funded prosecutor. There's enough DNA evidence to convince the average jury that I am in fact a Chimpanzee, just by showing them that I share 96% of chimp DNA. Prosecutors are quick to point out the difference between "shadow of a doubt" and "reasonable doubt" - 96% DNA clearly removes any 'reasonable' doubt that I am not a chimp. People have been executed in this country within the last decade with even flimsier evidence.
Most murder suspects have to pay their life's savings and rack up additional years of debt to cover legal expenses while simultaneously losing earning opportunities, usually resulting in bankruptcy even if they are acquitted. Even when they hire an attorney they usually don't have the funds to put up an equivalent defense compared to state budgets. The cost of legal defense can devastate an entire extended family. When Brian Banks was falsely accused of rape his mother sold her house, car and went into debt to cover his legal expenses. He is an NFL hopeful with a goal to make enough money to pay back his mother. Not every falsely accused will have such an opportunity.
Having a public defender appointed to represent you just means you get an under-paid, unmotivated lawyer that just wants to wrap up the case quickly with an admission of guilt or a plea agreement. But the state can spend $10 million on just one case in the name of being "tough on crime". Prosecutors have to win almost every case that goes to trial or force the accused to accept archaic plea deals. If they let suspects walk on lack of evidence it becomes front page news, and it damages their future prospects, especially if they seek election to a public office. The emergence of the Prison-Industrial Complex is one of the greatest present-day threats to our democracy and individual freedoms. Pray it doesn't happen to you.