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French Police Unsure Which Twin To Charge In Sexual Assaults
An anonymous reader writes "In a real life Prisoner's Dilemma taking place in the French city of Marseille, twin brothers have been arrested for a string of sexual assaults. While say they are sure that one of them committed the crimes (corroborated by a standard DNA test), police were told that it would cost upwards of €1m euros (£850,000, $1.3m USD) to distinguish between them using DNA evidence."
I am not a French Lawyer, but I think that would be coercion.
Will someone with a better understanding of genetics please explain how a genetic test is even possible?
My understanding is that identical twins -- arising from the same zygote -- are genetically identical. Not just "pretty much identical" as the article states.
What possible "genetic test" is being proposed that could differentiate between the brothers? Is the town being scammed?
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Identical twins isn't the interesting case. It's the conjoined twins that are the real puzzle. Suppose there are a pair of conjoined twins. One is an artist and hates computers, one is a programmer and hates art. Everybody knows this and will testify to the fact. When the artist goes to sleep, the programmer whips out a laptop and hacks into the Pentagon. He gets caught, gets arrested, and admits guilt... what are you going to do, imprison him?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
That is nonsense:
If both stay silent, maybe end up with time served 'cause they can't be sure it which of you it was.
You can not convict someone on that base.
Supposed I was innocent. Then according to the DNA evidence my twin did it. When he and I stay silent, they still don't know who it was. So the first paragraph of all "constitutional states": innocent until proven otherwise comes to play.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Throw them both in jail until one confesses. If they want to act like children they can be treated like children..
it doesn't matter which twin committed the sexual assault, they are both guilty. one is guilty of conspiracy because he's lying for the other, and the other is guilty of sexual assault.
It sounds a little implausible, but perhaps I am unaware of the forensic issues. Due to massive improvements in DNA sequencing, it costs less than $10,000 to acquire a full genome (see https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ ). So, back-of-the-envelope:
(a) $20k to acquire both genomes, plus
(b) some computational effort to identify interesting DNA polymorphisms ($0 - $1000 ???), plus
(c) PCR'ing out and sequencing of a region of the crime-scene DNA (cheap; less than $100).
So $22k, not counting labor costs?
IAAMB (I am a molecular biologist), but not a forensic one. Maybe it just doesn't work that way. Anyone have other information?
I assume both twins are guilty. With ovemr a dozen cases it looks like always one was commiting a crime and the other one tried to fabricate an alibi.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You don't perform just one single sequencing due to the error rate.
The best way to get the error sigma down is to run 10 or more sequences, however the money allotted only allows for 3 per sample.
I am trying to figure out how they are getting full sequencing done so cheaply.
My guess is they are willing to run less sequences and accept the higher error rate due to the smaller sample pool of suspects.
Knowing one is 70% likely while the other is 30% likely, when they already have claimed only one of these two people could possibly have done it, would likely be enough for a conviction.