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DNA Testing Backlogs In Crime Labs

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Judges, lawyers, and police officers have expressed that jurors have unrealistic expectations regarding the capabilities of crime labs and their ability to produce physical evidence. In 2006, 61% of law enforcement agencies indicated that they had insufficient storage capacity, funds, technology, staff, or space especially as it relates to DNA evidence . Durnal reports that in worst cases, evidence is completely ignored or left behind because there isn’t any room to properly store it. In addition, some accounts have suggested that this greater demand has contributed to the increasing number of DNA testing backlogs in crime labs all over the country. Police officers, investigators, and laboratory workers have admitted that they feel the pressure
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26 out of 28 analysts/agents have provided inaccurate statements or flawed reports to the courts in 41 states ("FBI Testimony"). This is thirteen more analysts than in the original study. According to the FBI, these analysts over exaggerated their results in courts and in reports for more than 4 decades. The cases being reviewed, are from before mitochondrial DNA was used ("FBI

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Jami Bull Mr. Mollenger Forensics Science 23 February 2018 Power of Proof The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization that helps people prove their innocence when wrongfully convicted through new DNA testing. 70% of eyewitnesses misidentified and 45% involved misapplication of forensic science. (“DNA Exonerations in the United States.”)

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The leader of this group, named Deirdre, said that scanning extra objects for DNA is important, ”When I talked to DNA experts that they were saying, ‘Yeah, I mean, if you swab that and get some skin cells or saliva and it’s just random, you get no hit on anybody, well then it neither here nor there.’ But they were saying, ‘but if put it in and you get a hit on a serial killer… well now you got enough to charge and convict somebody.’ So what you call relevant and irrelevant you can only do once you have a test result” (111). Deirdre likes to test anything that could possibly lead them to another suspect in the crime. Not everyone in the detective business is, however, not like her.

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In the article, “Family of Man Cleared by DNA Still Seeks Justice,” Wade Goodwyn writes about the rape of Michele Mallin and the confession that sets free a wrongly convicted man. Timothy Cole, a student in Lubbock was arrested and convicted as the Texas Tech rapist based on the eyewitness account of one victim. On Sunday night, March 24th, 1985, Michele Mallin, a college sophomore at the time, needed to move her vehicle to a legal parking spot after forgetting to earlier that day. At around 10pm, after finishing moving her car, a man appeared asking her for jumper cables to fix his broke down car. Mallin recalls him pushing her back into her own car, threatening to kill her with a knife and chain-smoking the entire time during the attack.

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Over the past 3 decades, in the United States evidence vaults, an uncountable number of DNA evidence specimens have been destroyed, leaving 6 thousand cases virtually unsolvable. Additionally, this destruction led 141 prisoners to be unable to prove their innocence (Greene). All of this has been going on for years, but was only recently uncovered through a series of investigative journaling. Muckraking still does exist in 2016 in newspapers as demonstrated by Susan Greene and Miles Moffeit's Denver Post series titled, "Trashing the Truth."

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The impact of Tim’s case was also felt on a national and even international level, as it shed light on the importance of using accurate and scientific evidence in the legal system and the need to reform the criminal justice system to prevent wrongful convictions. Tim’s story has inspired many other cases to be re-opened and re-examined, leading to the exoneration of several other innocent individuals. Overall, the case of Tim Cole has had a profound impact on the criminal justice system and has helped to bring about important changes in the use of DNA

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547 Words | 3 Pages

Statement of the Problem DNA has become a vital part of criminal investigations. DNA can include and exclude suspects of criminal investigations. During a criminal investigation, all DNA should be collected, properly preserved and tested, but at times this does not occur or the technology was not available for this process to occur. In addition, DNA has become an imperative portion of exoneration cases.

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Imagine that you have an opportunity to move into one of a number of open positions in your organization. Perhaps you are offered two different positions and you have to decide which one you want. So how do you choose the right one for you? To make the right choice, you have to decide what factors are most important to you in a new job, and then you have to choose the option that best addresses these factors. However this operates on two levels – on a rational level and on an emotional, "gut" level.

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Lastly, informants/ jailhouse snitches about 15% of DNA exonerated cases have involved this

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6). Based on the research Dwyer (2005) concludes that in order to increase legitimacy and consistency of police departments, video cameras should be turned on from the beginning of questioning (Dwyer, 2015, para. 9). The Erie County district attorney identified misidentification and unreliable statements as causes of wrongful convictions (Dwyer, 2015, para. 10). The article also reviews the effects of DNA testing and the unexpected flaws and errors that had led to false convictions.

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Every day forensic investigators use tactics just like the ones that were discussed throughout the paper. It’s more than just looking for an admission of guilt, and interrogating potential suspects until they

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All state justice systems should allow post-conviction DNA testing and the collection of DNA from suspects. This will help the wrongly convicted to prove their innocence and avoid the death penalty, and also have the chance at exoneration. Law enforcement should collect DNA from suspects to prove if suspects truly are innocent or guilty. As well as require state officials to properly catalogue and preserve biological evidence for as long as the suspect is incarcerated. DNA testing is an important way for those who have been wrongly convicted to prove their innocence.

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The next topic to show why DNA testing is important to law enforcement is the unanalyzed evidence stored away hoping one day to be tested. There was a study done showing over a time frame of five years that there was about 40% of unanalyzed rape and homicide cases that had DNA evidence waiting to be tested. They suspect that there maybe a few causes for this kind of problem. These unanalyzed cases are a part of backlogs and they are terming as cases of justice denied. Some speculate that the investigating officer can be a cause of why evidence is not tested.

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Thesis: Police interrogations can occasionally lead to false confessions due to misclassification, coercion, and contamination. I. The phrase “Innocent until proven guilty” is a popular statement among law enforcement and government employees, but this statement is not always upheld, as various errors, such as misclassification, are a major cause of false confessions. A. Misclassification errors are caused by “investigator bias,” where the investigator goes into the interrogation believing the suspect is guilty. (Keene)

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DNA in forensic science The majority of cells making up the human body are diploid cells carrying identical DNA, with the exception of haploid gametes and red blood cells. Several types of biological evidence such as blood and hair are commonly used in forensic science, which is the scientific study of evidence for crime scene investigations and other legal matters. Forensic science is used for the purpose of DNA analysis, this is the analysis of DNA samples to determine if it came from a particular individual. DNA analysis is done by obtaining DNA samples from an individual; next, a large sample of DNA is produced from amplified selected sequences from the DNA collected.

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