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12 - On trial! Governing forensic DNA technologies in the USA

from Section 2 - National contexts of forensic DNA technologies and key issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2012

By
Jay D. Aronson
Edited by
Richard Hindmarsh  and
Barbara Prainsack
Richard Hindmarsh
Affiliation:
Griffith University, Queensland
Barbara Prainsack
Affiliation:
King's College London
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

When DNA profiling was first introduced into the American legal system in late 1987, judges and prosecutors heralded it as the ‘greatest advance in crime fighting technology since fingerprints’ (People of New York v. George Wesley and Cameron Bailey 1988). Press accounts proclaimed that the technique would ‘revolutionize’ law enforcement (Lewis 1988; Marx 1988; Moss 1988). In many ways, it has. In the past two decades, DNA evidence has been used in the USA to solve countless violent crimes that might otherwise have been relegated to cold case files, putting thousands upon thousands of rapists and murderers behind bars and inducing guilty pleas from thousands more. Arrest warrants have been issued based solely on crime scene DNA profiles (Bieber 2002; Denver District Attorney 2008). Millions of profiles are now stored in a national DNA database, ready to be used in the aid of criminal investigations around the country. DNA evidence has even been used to free more than 250 ‘wrongfully convicted’ individuals from prison – until recently a uniquely American phenomenon that signals both the problems inherent in the country's criminal justice system and its faith in the power of science to bring the truth to light (Innocence Project 2010).

Yet, the introduction and development of DNA profiling in the USA has been far from perfect. Although closure, if not complete resolution, has been achieved in the majority of debates over molecular biology and population genetics that once affected the legal admissibility of the technique (Thompson 1993; Derksen 2003; Aronson 2007; Lynch et al. 2008), several issues remain inadequately addressed by the scientific and legal communities.

Type
Chapter
Information
Genetic Suspects
Global Governance of Forensic DNA Profiling and Databasing
 , pp. 240 - 261
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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