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French Police Unsure Which Twin To Charge In Sexual Assaults

Posted by timothy on from the ok-fellas-time's-up dept.

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."

2 of 626 comments (clear)

  1. Re:!(Prisoner's Dilemma) by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. Re:Would Someone Explain This? by SocratesJedi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?