III. Other Point of Views from Experts

a. Changes to Ensure the Validity of DNA Testing

DNA evidence in the courtroom is obviously becoming a more dependable tactic to serve justice to the unjust. However, the use of DNA testing to determine the culpability of a criminal is not very viable evidence in the courtroom, because of the deliberate manipulation of DNA test results, the possibility of human error, and even just random chance. Also, DNA evidence is not viable because of the quality and methodology of the laboratory work done by scientists, including the lab's error rate, and also the statistical interpretation of the data. There are thousands of cases that DNA evidence has been used to free the innocent, but there some cases that there

An example of a DNA evidence error took place in America when various press reports released in early February made mention of a case wherein a local police department confessed to having identified an innocent person as a criminal by a DNA test that was said to be in error. A U.S police agency that had secured near 100 convictions on the basis of DNA testing, admitted that, as far back as April of 1999, they had matched a sample taken from the scene of a burglary to six loci on the DNA molecule of one of 700,000 persons whose DNA was collected in the national database. The suspect was a man with advanced Parkinson's disease, who could not drive and could barely dress himself. He lived 200 miles from the site of the burglary. His blood sample had been taken when he was arrested, and then released, after hitting his daughter in a family dispute. He was arrested despite his protestations of innocence and alibi evidence that he was babysitting a sick daughter at home. Police dismissed these protestations stating that "it had to be him" since the DNA matched. The odds of the arrestee's DNA being wrongly matched against that of the crime scene were said to be one in 37 million (Moenssans 2000).

lawyers, judges, laypersons, and indeed the police, who make use of DNA evidence test results, is that they do not understand the true meaning of the statistics used by the experts. All but the initiated believe that when a DNA "match" is reported with odds of one in 37 million, we will encounter a like match in the DNA pattern only once in 37 million people. To test whether this is a common misunderstanding, the author [Prof. Moenssens], when lecturing to some 100+ trial judges, asked them what they understood the meaning of the testimony to be. All those who responded viewed the report as having said that this defendant's particular DNA pattern would occur only once in 37 million individuals (Moenssans 2000).

Fortunately, an error resulting in a miscarriage of justice has yet to be demonstrated in forensic DNA casework, although it is perhaps inevitable that it will occur someday.

“Years ago, DNA typing achieved such wide acceptance and proven reliability that opponents now concentrate on two principal points of attack: (1) the quality and methodology of the laboratory work, including the lab's error rate, and (2) the statistical interpretation of data (Coleman 2000).”

Some topics in this essay:
Criminal Justice”, Evidence DNA, Chain Reaction, Abstract DNA, Practice Criminalistics, Daily February, DNA Courtroom, Coleman’s Scheck, Prof Moenssens, dna evidence, School Law, dna testing, six loci, “dna evidence boon, “dna evidence, evidence boon, test results, dna match, criminal justice”, boondoggle criminal, boondoggle criminal justice”, evidence boon boondoggle, boon boondoggle criminal, boon boondoggle, criminal justice” 1998,