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DNA Evidence

lionking

In the Peanut Gallery
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It seems that DNA evidence is being questioned around the world. A very reputable university in Australia has started a campaign to free "wrongly convicted" criminals.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/21/2777679.htm?section=justin

Griffith University Innocence Project is committed to freeing innocent persons who have been wrongly convicted. By working to correct failures in our criminal justice system, the Project will foster an Australian legal culture that champions the defence of the innocent, and protects the marginalised and oppressed

So is DNA evidence reliable, or subject to challenges like this?
 
I suppose that it is possible that DNA evidence may be used improperly or that adequate controls and methods of confimation are not employed.

I have heard of cases where particular lab technicians have been favored by prosecutors because they seem to give the results that the prosecutor wanted. If there is basic dishonesty or gross incompetence in the labwork, the results might not be trustworthy.
 
I do not see skepticism about DNA evidence there, but rather they want to use DNA evidence to exculpate wrongly convicted persons.
We are committed to freeing innocent persons who have been wrongly convicted in Australia. We will take on cases where initial investigations support inmates' assertions that they have been wrongly convicted and where innocence may be established through the use of DNA technology.
 
The idea here is not to question the reliability of DNA evidence but to use DNA evidence to question the reliability of questionable convictions based on other kinds of evidence.
 
I suppose that it is possible that DNA evidence may be used improperly or that adequate controls and methods of confimation are not employed.

It seems to me this should be easy to prove by simply providing examples where two (non-related) people match according to the test criteria courts accept.

Indeed, IIRC the FBI has a database of millions of people, criminals and agents. A reasonably skilled data miner should be able to run a simple matching program that uses court criteria to produce such tables as output.
 
And I wouldn't expect a lot of people to get "sprung" by new DNA testing -- when it became available, very few requested it because the system mostly works, and they knew it would just be another nail in the coffin.

Which makes prisoners who request it and are denied multiple times a sad case and evidence of government abuse. There's a current case where a guy was freed after a long time in jail, having been rejected on his DNA test requests 3 times over the years.

Any prosecutors reading this? You should be ashamed in light of the previous two paragraphs. I suggest rather encouraging it, since people who want a re-test probably are innocent, or at least beyond a reasonable doubt anymore. Then you can look like the hero rather than the idiot who struggled to unfairly keep them behind bars.


Maybe if we set up a web site where people could "throw shoes at the face" of prosecutors who tried their best to get in the way of DNA tests for prisoners in jail who are eventually exonerated. Do you want the quick political benefits of preventing the revealing of a mistake (a horrid thing to do, but I can see climbers making such a calculation, sigh) and thus end up, in the long run, a laughing stock like Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and godwin knows who else?
 
I recall a case where a man was shown to be innocent of a rape and murder, but the prosecution argued that he should remain behind bars because he was convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony and not on DNA evidence. The eyewitness, a child at the time of her original testimony, later recanted. The idea of saying someone should remain locked up due to a legal technicality is absurd.
 
It seems that DNA evidence is being questioned around the world. A very reputable university in Australia has started a campaign to free "wrongly convicted" criminals.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/21/2777679.htm?section=justin

So is DNA evidence reliable, or subject to challenges like this?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm with Puppycow: I see no evidence in your cite (as corrected) that casts doubt on DNA evidence. It says:

We are committed to freeing innocent persons who have been wrongly convicted in Australia. We will take on cases where initial investigations support inmates' assertions that they have been wrongly convicted and where innocence may be established through the use of DNA technology.
It sounds to me that they're relying on DNA (and its reliability) to establish the truth of the cases they investigate. Where is this challenge of DNA testing of which the OP speaks? If it were "being questioned around the world" the questioning should be cited, right?
 
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I am with shadron and puppycow. The link seems to say the opposite of what you said it does.
I would also be interested in some examples of where "DNA evidence is being questioned around the world."
 
Possibly the OP is thinking of the Farah Jama case

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/10/2768294.htm

in which a man was convicted of rape based on DNA evidence, which turned out to be due to contamination.

As a result, Victoria's DPP ordered an audit of all cases based on DNA evidence

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-new...dpp-orders-dna-case-review-20091126-js6d.html
Yes that's it. I expect a large number of cases reviewed in Victoria over the next few years.
 
As with any other valuable piece of physical evidence, DNA has to be established through clear physical link and a evidentury chain of control (name for this?). The rules have to be established and maintained, otherwise the DNA is useless, as is any other evidence. Given the proper procedures and maintenance, it should be as good or better than a fingerprint for identifying the perp. If the chain is not maintained, then the evidence is worthless and ought to be reviewed if it was used regardless.

What more can one say?
 

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