Prosecutors always push the envelope to win convictions, so this Chicago Tribune story about how they are misusing DNA evidence in criminal cases is no big surprise.
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Thanks for the post.
The prosecutor’s attitude is scary .
Violent predators such as the assailant of the little girl need isolated to protect society.
In my non-scientific opinion, the case was an abuse of prosecutorial discretion and made the defendant a victim while stopping the search for the true predator.
Very interesting, but not surprising. I’m in the process of putting together videos from the Brad Cooper case of all of the instances of prosecutors mischaracterizing the evidence. It is truly unbelievable but all of the trial video is available so it is all there for everyone to see.
One thing I wish the article would have described – how was the defendant released? Did a judge overturn the conviction, throw out the evidence? I’m surprised they didn’t try him again if that’s the case. It seems like once they “win” that conviction, they never want to let it go.
Here’s the youtube link of the prosecutor misstating evidence in the Cooper case, fyi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYw_WWZaHXU
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I would agree that, on its own, these sorts of statistically weak DNA matches are of little value. But to say, as Edward Blake is quoted as saying in the article, that “It has almost no value at all as evidence,” reflects pretty faulty thinking for two reasons. First, a profile that is statistically weak (when it matches a known person) can be incredibly strong exculpatory evidence when it does not match a suspect. It could, in fact, exonerate a suspect. Second, weak DNA evidence can serve to corroborate/disprove testimonial evidence of various sorts. This seems to be the way it was used in the reported case, where the complainant appears to have reported inappropriate contact by the defendant. As potentially corroborating evidence, this type of evidence is clearly of significant value. For those reasons, labs certainly ought to be reporting out these sorts of statistically weak DNA profiles. The lawyers can then argue about the significance of the results in the context of the other evidence in the case. That is a lawyer’s job, after all.