0. J.' s DNA in Court
Tucker, William
William Tucker O.J.'s DNA in Court Blood evidence places Mr. Simpson at the scene of the Brentwood murders, but in a courtroom culture dominated by well-heeled defense lawyers, will it matter? T...
...Under these circumstances, it is not surprising to find that many lawyers and law professors now argue that it is useless to seek justice in the criminal courts and that the civil courts are the proper place for redressing criminal damages...
...After serving an apprenticeship with the state, they generally—if reluctantly—switch sides...
...This material serves no known purpose...
...The difficulty is that we rarely have enough genetic material in the sample," says Mark Stolorow, director of operations at Cellmark Diagnostics, which is running the tests in the Simpson case...
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...Neufeld and Scheck counterattacked by accusing Caskey of profiting from the technology because he held a patent in the field and received a $15,000 annual royalty...
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...It turns out that a variety of common substances such as old playing cards, cigarette packages, lacquer and aerosol spray will, along with explosives, yield a positive result [in the Greiss test]," wrote Neufeld...
...Not surprisingly, Neufeld and Scheck have been hired by the Simpson defense team as its chief DNA experts...
...The odds that Simpson himself, rather than this unknown person, was the source of the blood at the crime scene seem reasonably convincing...
...No video cameras were on hand to record the event...
...Because of peculiar characteristics of this portion of the gene, however, this tiny fraction has proved significant for making highly individual identifications...
...The murder weapon has never been found...
...The case against the former football great is largely circumstantial, and there are weaknesses to the case that might make an American jury throw up its hands and declare reasonable doubt...
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...35.00 5 Mae Sams Pulashed annually 12 28, The American Spectator November 1994 lation of Los Angeles (3.5 million), there is less than a 50 percent chance that any other individual has Simpson's DNA profile...
...The longer odds, according to Lewontin, that Simpson's profile matches with someone of another ethnic group must also be factored into the equation...
...Accused of killing his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a young visitor, Ronald Goldman, Simpson has persistently denied his guilt...
...The process of "discovery," for example, is completely unique to the American courtroom...
...Neufeld and Scheck challenged the admissibility of checked again and turned out to be a match...
...There has never been a case where one laboratory declared a match in DNA samples and another laboratory declared the opposite...
...The major problem with the Greiss tests was that it produced false positives...
...Lander—who was embarrassed on the witness stand—turned out to have received a $28,000 fee for testifying...
...Wherever factors other than race have been the key to singling out a suspect, ethnic ceilings on DNA profiles are irrelevant...
...The correct reference group for Simpson's positive DNA match is the entire population of the United States . Using the figures compiled from the FBI files by Devlin and Kidd as a conservative estimate, there is a 1-in-7-million chance that the blood found at the scene belongs to someone other than 0. J. This means that in the entire popuComplete Malang address Fun awn...
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...Castro pleaded guilty anyway and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term...
...If you have common alleles, you may match with 2,500 other people in the country (1-in-100,000), while if your alleles are rare, the match may be only 1-in- 1-billion...
...Critics of forensic DNA like to point to a Texas case where a murderer was selected out of a small, inbred black population...
...This time the prosecution won, but not before a lot of expert blood had been spilled...
...or Circulation average No Cooles.chteem Dunne Preceding 12 Mash* Actual Nis...
...They also pointed out that Lifecodes had declared one match when the bands were outside the 5 percent range of error...
...What are the chances that a forensic sample will degenerate into his code of 26-13-12-27-11...
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...When Castro came under suspicion, a speck of blood was found on his watch...
...In an early case in England, two adolescent girls in ainnocent as it has in implicating the guilty...
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...The unsubtle point behind Lewontin's talk of forensic "relevance" was this: since blacks, Hispanics, and Indians commit a disproportionate share of all crimes, an individual within one of these groups may end up being implicated by the newfangled technology...
...Handwriting analysis and psychiatric testimony in insanity cases usually come down to a "battle of experts...
...Why is O.J...
...The number of probes used depends on how much genetic The only major controversy now surrounding the DNA technique is whether the chances of an innocent person being falsely implicated are 1-in10,000 or 1-in-10 million...
...Moreover, most young prosecutors—however unwittingly—are training to become defense attorneys...
...Career prosecutors are government functionaries who labor at modest salaries...
...Eighty different state crime labs, plus the FBI, have also entered the field...
...Thus, when compared against people in a suspect's own racial or ethnic 'group, the chances of an accidental match-up might be higher...
...How did DNA profiling—almost a decade old and widely employed in other countries—end up having such a rough ride through the American justice system...
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...Three members of the Hell's Angels had killed a young man they mistook for another gang member...
...In actuality, the alleles do not occur with the same frequency...
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...Lander and Roberts argued that band-shifting created too much uncertainty...
...Protests arose, and this year the NAS convened a second panel to reconsider the ceilings hypothesis...
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...Is it because somebody spotted a "dark-skinned intruder" and thought it might be 0.J...
...Actually, the black population has proved to be more genetically diversified than any other racial group...
...At the four-probe level there were none...
...In particular, they were concerned that Lifecodes was declaring matches in instances where the X-ray images that read the VNTRs were identical but shifted slightly out of place—a phenomenon called "band-shifting...
...10 The American Spectator November 1994 29...
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...Other genetic markers such as hair color, height, and weight tend to vary by population...
...S o things stood until 1989, when a handful of lawyers mounted a counterattack...
...Also include the names and 05514,3136 of Individuals who are stockholders who own or hold 1 semen, or more of the total amount of bonds...
...In 1991, Lewontin co-authored an article in Science that argued that patterns at separate VNTR sites might be inherited as a unit, creating similar genetic profiles among small, inbred populations...
...Different people have different DNA sequences at their junk sites...
...Neufeld and Scheck twice attempted to have the case reopened on the basis of Caskey's alleged conflict of interest, but the conviction has been allowed to stand...
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...Simpson a suspect in the killing of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman...
...n 1990, in Scientific American, Neufeld laid out the full case against DNA fingerprinting...
...Two years later, the battle was joined again in an Ohio case...
...Simpson is a suspect because of (1) his previous relationship to one of the victims...
...Only with "dermatoglyphic" fingerprinting (the marks on the end of your finger) are the probabilities of the same general order of magnitude...
...The first important case involved Jose Castro, a South Bronx janitor accused of While arguing that DNA profiling should not be used against criminal suspects, Neufeld and Scheck are simultaneously representing 600 condemned prisoners who claim that DNA analysis will prove they are innocent...
...Many defense attorneys toil in obscurity, but those that are successful are the high rollers of the trade...
...If your spouse sues you for divorce, his or her attorney can interrogate you about your sex life, your personal thoughts—anything he deems relevant...
...and Other Security Holders Ownkm or Nodes I patent m Moro ot Total Amount of Gonda, kettftgagee, or Other Securibes...
...The American Spectator November 1994 25 material is available and how much a prosecutor wants to spend...
...The woman had been raped and a semen deposit was found...
...Esker...
...American laboratories report that 30 percent of tests yield negative matches, exonerating innocent suspects who would otherwise have gone to trial...
...You can see the patterns are identical, but they're slightly displaced...
...In 1987, Jeffreys licensed his technology to Imperial Chemical, a British firm, which set up Cellmark Diagnostics, in Bethesda, Maryland...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216 Managing Eater dame and Complete Paling MOM...
...Junk DNA varies from one individual to the next...
...He had reportedly stalked both victims and was seen driving from the scene of the murder acting in an agitated manner...
...In practice, the lab would probably call the results "inconclusive," which happens in 10 to 30 percent of all tests...
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...Even for close relatives, the chance of a coincidental match-up is only 1-in-1,000...
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...Police asked males in the village to give a DNA sample for comparison...
...154(1...
...There is still nothing to prove that the intruder was black...
...The chance that they would match up at every one of the fifteen to twenty sites is well beyond 1-in-l-trillion...
...In 1992, Neil J. Risch and Bernard Devlin of Yale University, using the FBI's database, generated 7.6 million genetic fingerprints and found only one chance match at the three-probe level...
...In an early incident in the United States, a young couple were murdered at an isolated campground in Colorado...
...Simpson, Neufeld now argues that the appointment of this new committee proves that the technology is still too controversial to be admitted in court...
...Simpson for a "wrongful death...
...The authors identified these groups as blacks, Hispanics, and Amerinds, and speculated that the chances of a false match-up within these populations might be as high as 1-in-10,000...
...A s a final argument against admissibility, Neufeld also raised what was soon to become the principal objection to DNA profiling: the idea that the genetic markers used in DNA analysis are not randomly distributed by racial groups, that they follow the pattern of hair and eye color, rather than blood types and fingerprints...
...Moreover, if Simpson is declared guilty, his conviction will be challenged in a long series of appeals...
...At best, defense attorneys can only hope to continue muddying the waters, grasping at every letter-to-the-editor as proof that a "scientific consensus" has yet to be reached...
...There are no eyewitnesses to the crime...
...Appeals courts in California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Minnesota, and five other states bought the argument and previous convictions were overturned in each state...
...Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (Required by 39 U S.0 3685) 1 PubliMMOS TM...
...The two separate tests performed in the Simpson case have involved more than five probes...
...In The Litigation Explosion, Walter Olson has documented how the rules of evidence in civil courtrooms have been widely expanded over the past four decades to favor plaintiffs...
...The band-shifting problem distorted results...
...The defendant claimed the rape was actually committed by his 12-year-old son and that he had accidentally killed the daughter in trying to break up the rape...
...Leading away from the crime scene was a trail of fresh blood, which apparently belonged to the murderer...
...A DNA comparison, however, showed the handyman could not have been the attacker...
...The argument was later expanded by Richard Lewontin, a maverick population geneticist at Harvard and co-founder (with fellow Harvardian Stephen Jay Gould) of the left-wing academic group Science for the People...
...Since the 1960s, the various "exclusionary rules" have limited the power of the police to investigate anything...
...On the civil side, on the other hand, plaintiff attorneys are the high rollers, raking off contingency fees from the nation's escalating damage awards...
...But Neufeld wanted to go a step further...
...Search warrants must specify exactly what the police expect to find before they start looking...
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...He was promptly dismissed as a suspect...
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...With paternity suits, we can just take blood samples out of someone's arm...
...The man was sentenced to life in prison...
...In 1989, Judge Gerald Sheindlin threw out the evidence tying the blood of the victim to Castro's watch—although evidence showing Castro himself was not the source of the 26 The American Spectator November 1994 blood was admitted...
...It canonly degenerate away from a positive match...
...In 1986, Jeffreys proposed that VNTRs could be used for criminal identifications...
...At five probes, the theoretical chances of two individuals having the same profile are 1-in-505, or 1-in-312-million...
...Lifecodes, Inc., now in Stamford, Connecticut, also went into the business, using a slightly different technology...
...A complete reading of the human genome is beyond present capabilities...
...DNA profiling has proved just as important in clearing thethe evidence on the grounds that the lab work was sloppy and there were too many uncertainties in the technology...
...Instead of merely increasing the odds, he now argued that there was no "consensus" about DNA technology in the scientific community and therefore the technique should be excluded altogether from criminal triThe American Spectator November 1994 27 als...
...Yet with DNA profiling, defense attorneys have successfully argued that, if scientists cannot agree whether the technology is 99.99999 percent certain or 99.99999999 percent certain, then it shouldn't be used at all...
...hamoon...
...Neufeld, Lander, and other critics squared off against the Department of Justice, which was supported by two prominent geneticists, Thomas Caskey of Baylor, and Kenneth Kidd of Yale...
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...At this point, genetic profiling reads only one ten-thousandth of the information in the genome—just as a fingerprint reads only a tiny fraction of the body's physical profile...
...Neufeld then outlined similar potential flaws in DNA profiling: samples were small, DNA could be changed by the presence of impurities and bacteria, the sample might degenerate in a number of ways...
...Once he was under suspicion, eyewitnesses were able to place him near the scene of the crime...
...The policeman who found a bloodstained glove at Simpson's house (matching another found at the crime William Tucker is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...
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...Melling Address 2020 N. 14th Street, Suite 750 Post Office Box 549 Arlington, VA 22216-0549...
...Copies or Single Maw Publish...
...For the sake of argument, assume there is a 1-in-10,000 chance that Simpson's DNA would match up with that of another black person, as Lewontin's "ceilings" hypothesis suggests...
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...Finally, another 10-year-old girl in Tennessee was molested in her home by a "large black man...
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...The forensic sample, which also contains his genes, has the same code...
...mortgages...
...It's like having two pieces of identical wallpaper that are hung poorly," says Michael Baird, lab director at Lifecodes...
...and (3) his failure to give any convincing account of his whereabouts at the time of the murder...
...Neufeld has not only carried through the battle in court, he has also succeeded in becoming the resident expert on the subject in the pages of Scientific American...
...The chances of an innocent person being implicated are next to nil, but the chances of a guilty person being falsely exonerated are reasonably high...
...People living near the equator, for example, generally have darker skin, while people in cold climates generally grow bulkier to conserve heat...
...I understand Mat anyone who N.M...
...In a blind test submitted by the California Association of Criminal Laboratory Directors, Cellmark had also misread one sample in fifty as a match...
...When he was identified, it was not because of his race, but by a semen sample...
...F rom its inception, DNA profiling has implicated the guilty and exonerated the innocent in a way that was previously unthinkable...
...S till, one can't come away from the issue without the impression that the attorneys opposing DNA evidence are trying to hold back a tidal wave of scientific research...
...Does this seem complicated...
...A local handyman with a record of child molestation had been seen near the crime by a neighbor, and immediately came under suspicion...
...Each cell in the body contains a complete set of genes...
...2) his documented record of threats and violence against her...
...Many defense attorneys profess that there is no such thing as an "uncoerced confession," since any suspect fully aware of his rights would contact his lawyer, who would tell him not to say anything...
...Substances other than the target chemical could give the same results...
...Most sites have more than a hundred known variations, which are called "alleles...
...Among attorneys who practice criminal law, the overwhelming majority are working on the side of the defense...
...The laboratories claim it is not a problem...
...Simpson has only a weak alibi, and those people who saw him during the interval seem to contradict his story...
...T he Simpson case, of course, is a good example of the ceilings fallacy...
...But Neufeld's opening analogy was misleading...
...Both were somewhat disenchanted with Lifecodes's performance...
...This "pose[s] a particularly difficult problem for the forensic use of VNTRs if the wrong ethnic group is used as the reference population...
...Pitchfork was stabbing to death Vilma Ponce and her two-year-old daughter in 1987...
...One person may have only one repetition at his junk site, while another may have two dozen...
...In 1991, the National Academy of Sciences gave the technology a ringing endorsement...
...In criminal cases, however, "multi-locus" probes did not always prove practical...
...The Human Genome Project has undertaken a 15-year effort to map all twenty-six human chromosomes, and several private firms are trying to short-circuit the process...
...VNTRs, however—like finD NA profiling begins with the established theory that no two people, except identical twins, have the same genetic makeup...
...One day we may be able to read the genome like a telephone directory...
...n nasty shack hero...
...Or it may serve as "packing material," protecting the working genes from harmful mutations, the way newspapers stuffed in a box will protect its fragile contents...
...At least two separate laboratories have examined this blood, using the technique of "DNA profiling," and have declared that it matches Simpson's DNA profile...
...The answer can be found in the structure of the American legal profession...
...All this has had an enormous impact on American justice...
...On the other hand, the rules of evidence in criminal courts have changed radically in the opposite direction...
...A good prosecutor can triple his salary by going into private (defense) practice...
...In the case of the campground murder, for example, the suspect could have been anyone...
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...A California appellate court has already overturned one conviction in a similar case, arguing that DNA evidence was "unreliable...
...That is why Ronald Goldman's mother is already suing O.J...
...A clot of blood, a trace of skin underneath a victim's fingernails, a drop of semen, the follicle attached to a single strand of hair—all contain enough cells to provide the information for a positive or negative match with a criminal suspect...
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...The man was tried and convicted...
...The chances that any two people would have the same variation at one site is about 1-in-50...
...The principal players have been Peter Neufeld, a New York defense attorney, and Barry Scheck, a professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York...
...This case was chronicled by Joseph Wambaugh in The Blooding...
...About 4,000 samples of DNA were tested last year, at an average of $1,000 per test...
...If something turns up that wasn't listed in the warrant, it may not be admissible as evidence, no matter how incriminating...
...Yet, as the trial began, there was a serious question of whether the jury would be allowed to hear this evidence...
...Itgerprints and blood types—appear to vary randomly across populations, with no ethnic or racial associations...
...All this assumes that suspects are implicated in crimes solely on the basis of their race—which in some cases they are...
...The whole earth's population is only 8 billion...
...Scotland Yard reports the same percentages...
...T his fall, O.J...
...Despite the much greater problem of false negatives, the attorneys argue that DNA evidence is valid when used on the side of the defense...
...In fact, many of the same attorneys will probably end up making the argument...
...In addition, these characteristic sequences repeat themselves a different number of times in different people—a phenomenon called "variable number tandem repeats" (VNTRs...
...The American Association of Trial Lawyers is dominated by plaintiff attorneys—just as the criminal justice committees of the state legislatures and bar associations are dominated by defense lawyers...
...The same legal principles that have kept DNA fingerprinting from being used in criminal trials will be turned around to argue for its admissibility in civil courts...
...Before testimony began, Eric S. Lander, of MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, testifying for the defense, and Richard J. Roberts, of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, testifying for the prosecution, decided to get together and issue a joint statement...
...Other forensic evidence long accepted in American courtrooms offers levels of certainty that are nowhere near that range...
...With DNA analysis, however—and particularly with the problems mentioned by Neufeld—the only real problem is false negatives...
...Thus it made no sense to compute the odds only against his racial group...
...It is not surprising that plaintiff attorneys often refer to themselves as "private attorneys general," empowered by the state to ransack people's belongings and personal lives in search of evidence for civil litigation...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216 10.7,714,1=,=.,-.%==4"="1::=0:"'""ol Ll:ved tgad...
...Genetic experts from both sides converged on the scene...
...He invented a "multi-locus" molecular probe that surveyed about fifteen to twenty VNTR sites, measuring their varying lengths...
...The attitude up to that point had been that DNA fingerprinting was infallible," said Neufeld...
...false or nwsleading inlomation on this lam or whom...
...may just be "hitchhiking" from generation to generation without contributing anything to the organism...
...Although the report attributed this to fear of AIDS, a more likely explanation is that word is circulating among rapists that leaving semen at the scene is the equivalent of leaving your calling card...
...Some are common while others are rare...
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...The science itself is not at issue...
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...In defending O.J...
...In 1985, Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist at the University of Leicester, England, proposed making forensic identifications with "junk" DNA, the mysterious, non-functioning genetic material that makes up about 95 percent of the human genome...
...In another instance, a man in Georgia allegedly killed his 10-year-old daughter after raping her...
...In order to avoid chance mistakes, it would be necessary to develop much more data about "subgroups that are likely to be relevant in forensic applications...
...Other forensic evidence long accepted in American courtrooms offers levels of certainty nowhere near that range...
...They estimated the chances of a match for five probes at 1-in-10-billion...
...Simpson had a stormy relationship with his exwife and had been arrested for beating her...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216 Eon., Mane end Combed Wang address) R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr., 2020 N. 14th Street, P.O...
...The incentives are overwhelming...
...Interrogations, under the Miranda rule, must be held in a formulaic setting, with suspects continually reminded of their right to remain silent or contact an attorney...
...But in criminal cases, we're often dealing with a speck of blood found on the sidewalk...
...In an effort to placate critics, however, the commission recommended that ethnic ceilings be adopted that would give race-adjusted odds for each positive identification...
...The result, once again, is that in all of Southern California, there is probably only one person who shares Simpson's genetic profile...
...Experts in the field say the VNTR method may be outdated within three years...
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...13 Publtcation Name The American Spectator I4 issue Date tor Cocutehon Data Caton October 1994 6 slant end N...
...Whatever objections can be raised today will probably be overcome tomorrow...
...Genetic profiling was done on both father and son...
...Simpson had a cut on his left index finger when questioned by police the next day...
...They are, in fact, approximately the same as the likelihood that a chance mismatch will occur in the first place—about 1-in-10 million...
...Neufeld compared DNA profiling to the Greiss test, a chemical test for nitrates from explosives, which had been used to convict six Irishmen in an IRA bombing...
...Genetics is the most rapidly exploding field in the scientific world...
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...Now suppose the forensic sample degenerates, as Neufeld suggested...
...In America, plaintiffs can make vague, unspecified charges and then force a defendant to hand over whole truckloads of corporate or personal information so that the plaintiff can wade through them in search of wrongdoing...
...Simpson is standing trial for murder in Los Angeles in what could be one of the most gripping courtroom dramas in decades...
...The other logical choice is that the murder was committed by an unknown intruder, but that intruder does not have to match Simpson's racial profile...
...small village had been raped and murdered over a three-year period...
...There is one piece of evidence, however, that is so powerful that it might easily erase any reasonable element of doubt from the jury's mind...
...The tape of a 911 call dramatically recorded his efforts to break into her home a year ago...
...But in other cases, the logic of "ethnic ceilings" is wholly irrelevant...
...Civil attorneys on the defense side are generally corporate functionaries...
...The sample was sent to Lifecodes, which said it belonged to the victim...
...As one juror put it, 'You can't argue with science.' We decided to show you could...
...0. J. Simpson may be found guilty or innocent, but one thing is certain: When he stands trial in Los Angeles this fall, he will have to account for why blood with his genetic blueprint was at the scene of the crime...
...Now suppose the suspect is innocent...
...Or ahem secunbes of the publishing corporation In item 11, 0 none...
...Blood-type identification, accepted in courts for decades, offers at best only a 90 percent verification (1-in10 possibility of a chance match-up...
...S o why has this kind of technological advance had such a rough time being accepted in American courtrooms...
...Thus, Jeffreys's multi-locus "genetic fingerprinting" (the name is trademarked) was supplanted by a "single-locus" probe, which, given about 8,000 cells (the amount in a drop of blood), can provide a "genetic profile" with somewhat lower degrees of certainty...
...This witness, however, sold her story to "Hard Copy" for $5,000, and has been dropped by the prosecution...
...Of the approximately 200,000 lawyers engaged in criminal work, only an eighth are prosecutors, while the remainder are representing criminal clients...
...A random check against profiles of known sex criminals turned up a match with a paroled felon in Florida...
...Depositions," by the same token, were once out-ofcourt interviews limited to people who were on theirdeathbed or otherwise unable to appear in court...
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...As a later Scientific American article put it, "An innocent suspect racially or ethnically similar to that of a criminal could have an inflated chance of matching a forensic sample—and thus be wrongly convicted...
...The test is now used in paternity suits...
...You have no "right to remain silent," but can only hire your own attorney...
...By purely arbitrary choice, the committee proposed that no allele should be assumed to occur with less than 10 percent frequency—a number that still produces odds of more than 6 million-to-1 at five probes...
...Samples could be accidentally switched or mislabeled—any number of things might happen...
...In other countries, you sue someone on the basis of evidence you already have at hand...
...scene) has a history of making disparaging remarks about minorities...
...To simplify, suppose that a suspect has a five-allele code that reads: 26-13-12-27-11...
...Juries were awed...
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...No matches were found, but it was later reported that one Colin Pitchfork had bribed someone else to substitute a sample for him...
...The semen on the little girl's clothes belonged to the father...
...Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, 2020 N. 14th Street, P.O...
...The "polymerase chain reaction" (PCR), a technique that uses a microbe found in hot springs to "amplify" small amounts of DNA, is now being used to make identifications with as little as 20 cells...
...Believe it or not, the only major controversy now surrounding the technique is whether the chances of an innocent person being falsely 24 The American Spectator November 1994 implicated are 1-in-10,000 (a high estimate arbitrarily chosen by a maverick scientist) or 1-in-10 million (a widely accepted figure that has been verified by an examination of all the DNA records on file with the FBI...
...If critics do succeed in having the few private labs taken off the job, their work will be taken over by the FBI and the state crime labs—an outcome that is unlikely to make opponents any happier...
...Now, 10,000-to-1 is still pretty long odds—certainly enough to erase any element of reasonable doubt where other incriminating evidence is present...
...IS acting...
...Publisher...
...Is it because he is black...
...DNA profiling is particularly useful in rapes and murders in which the victim struggles or the criminal leaves behind some trace of tissue or bodily fluid...
...The same situation prevails in eight other states...
...A recent newspaper article noted that rapists are now wearing condoms in 20 percent of all attacks...
...As a result of all this an innocent person might be convicted of a crime...
...Blood from one of the defendants was found in the victim's truck...
...Under pressure from the plaintiff bar, however, the courts turned depositions into a format where plaintiff attorneys can hold private interrogations...
...The great irony is that, while arguing that DNA profiling should not be used against criminal suspects, Neufeld and Scheck are simultaneously representing 600 condemned prisoners who claim that DNA analysis will prove they are innocent...
...check boa...
Vol. 27 • November 1994 • No. 11
