Flawed DNA Testing
It is that time again when Americans
across racial lines, ideologies and different parties are using the internet to
help shed some light on reforming the nation’s criminal justice system. No
matter what time of the day it is, it is common for an average person to scroll
down on facebook and see that the prevalence of technology has drastically
affected the society as a whole in many ways, both positively and negatively.
Similarly, DNA testing has become the most important tool used to help convict
people for their crimes. DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid, a carrier of
genetic information and a “self-replicating material, present in nearly all living organisms as the
main constituent of chromosomes,” and with its testing, a person can be found
guilty of his or her crime (“DNA”).
Since the 1980s, the technology has helped in solving the nation’s high
violent crimes but there still remains some loopholes, especially in regards to
the those wrongfully convicted. Improper forensic testings’ role in uncovering
cases of innocent people has greatly challenged the validity and truthfulness
of the Justice System, and raised debates of whether those affected will ever
be compensated.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid testing is
enriched with phenomenal history why the tool has been so controversial in the
country’s court system. The ideology of
DNA was first introduced in 1985 by a
professor at the University of Leicester, Alec Jeffreys, who was able to
approve how unique personalized DNA material in each person’s skin, body
fluids, blood, nails and hair was. From the information, law enforcement
agencies decided to make use of DNA technology as a major aid in being able to
isolate alleged suspects with forensic evidence collected at crime scenes, and
shifted away from investigating through evidence like shoe-print at a crime
scene (Hirby). Shoeprints are important source of information but it would not
be nearly as effective for identifying a person as their DNA or fingerprints.
In 1987, Tommy Lee Andrews convicted of rape in the Circuit Court in Orange
County, Florida was found guilty after DNA test matched his DNA from blood
sample with that of semen traces in the rape kit (Dennis and Cormier). The emergence of accurately
identifying the actual criminal started with Andrews case, and that continued
even though the admissibility of DNA evidence was not largely disputed yet.
Analysts focus on 13 or more places in the genome, called loci, where humans
are extraordinarily diverse. Each locus contains a “short tandem repeat,” a bit
of DNA that is repeated multiple times. The exact number of repeats at each
locus varies from person to person and can range anywhere between the low
single digits to the mid-50s. There are two numbers for each locus, and the
chance that two people have the same pairs at all 13 loci is low (Starr). Once
the technology was widely used and better understood by prosecutors, defense
attorneys looked to challenge the admissibility of DNA tests, which they said
were two standards.
The two standards used to judge the
admissibility of the evidence was the Frye and the Daubert standard. The Frye
standard had come from the Frye v. United States case in 1923 where scientific
evidence was to be properly established to be in general acceptance in the
field that it belongs. On the other hand, the Daubert standard in 1933 in
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, where the Supreme Court evidence must
be valid and reliable to be admitted as relevant scientific evidence. Either
way, both Supreme Court case decisions proved that accurate DNA analysis was
important to access any case further but there were still some challenges that
erupted. For instance, a challenge to admissibility were when the testing
laboratory’s procedures were questioned and a testimony from an expert failed
to “use generally accepted, reliable techniques to prove if the blood on the
watch, in the People of New York v. Castro” case was that of a victim. Perhaps,
in a similar case in Minnesota the court had acknowledged the scientific
acceptance of DNA testing but stated that “admissibility of [DNA] test results
in a particular case hinges on the laboratory's compliance with appropriate
standards and controls.” Therefore, the laboratory's methodological process and
protocol were deemed insufficient and the evidence was dismissed. Yet in 2011,
the issue was resolved since many courts supported the method as reliable and
accepted but over the past several years, the authenticity of DNA tests in
solving cases raised more problems
(Dennis and Cormier).
The Department of Justice outlines
some of the biggest obstacles the American Criminal Justice faces and why it
needs to be reformed. One of the biggest problems is the consequential backlog
of unanalyzed DNA samples and biological evidence from crime scenes, especially
in sexual assault and murder cases. Research indicates that crime scene samples
wait unanalyzed in police or crime lab storage facilities and due to that DNA
databases can avert tragic results. For
instance, in 1995, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement linked evidence
found on a rape-homicide victim to a convicted rapist DNA profile just eight
days before he was scheduled for parole.
Had he been released prior to being linked to the unsolved rape-homicide,
he may very well have raped or murdered again. Furthermore many of the Nation’s
crime laboratories “do not have the capacity necessary to analyze DNA samples
in a timely fashion. Many have limited
equipment resources, outdated information systems, and overwhelming case
management demands.” As a result, the
criminal justice system as a whole is unable to reap the full benefits of DNA
technology (D.O.J). Notably, there is also a problem with having variety of
professionals involved in the criminal justice system, which include police officers, defense attorneys, judges,
forensic scientists and medical personals, many of whom are not reliable.
A case many defense lawyers refer
back to and use to help strengthen their wrongful convictions, especially those
connected to DNA testing, is the story of Annie Dookhan. She was a state
chemist arrested for proceeding drug samples received from suspects three times
faster than her fellow colleagues. Her ambition to declare drug samples
positive that were not tested at all, tampering with evidence, forging
signatures and lying to the court, tained more than 40,000 drug samples. After
her arrest in 2000, she pleaded guilty to 27 counts and was sentenced to three
to five years in prison and two years’ probation. Dookhan’s plea affected many
innocent lives who were in jail for the crimes that they did not commit
(Seelye). Surprisingly, no one in the lab had questioned her behavior or
bothered to re-analyze the evidence she was working with. In an article
published by Arizona Law Review, she said she “messed up bad,” and “amazingly,
her misconduct had gone undiscovered for nine years, despite the fact that she
testified--and was cross-examined--in at least 150 trials” (Driscoll).
Apparently, such people and additional problems like DNA’s incapability of determining
whether the convicted person was the source of the DNA on the evidence.
DNA evidence is so powerful that it
has been the only reason for some criminals to stay away from their families or
reunite with their loved ones. The Innocence Project is the largest
organization that works on exoneration cases of those wrongfully convicted
through improper testings like DNA analysis and pushes the government to reform
the criminal justice system. Overall, its mission is to free hundreds of people
in jail and give them justice, by collaboratively working with the law through
legal work and as well as give support to the exonerate as they begin to
rebuild their lives. People like Clarence Harrison and Kennedy Brewer are of
the few that spent years in jail for a crime they did not commit. Harrison was
exonerated in 2004 after being in prison for 17 years in Georgia for rape,
robbery and kidnapping a 25-year-old woman from the bus stop. At the request of
the DeKalb County Public Defender’s office, slides from the rape kit were sent
to a commercial lab for DNA analysis where the lab was unable to perform DNA
analysis on the slides. Despite that, Harrison did not give up and contacted the Georgia Innocence Project in
2003. He was told in the early 1990s that all the evidence had been destroyed
because the last slide was sent for DNA analysis but later discovered that one
slide contained evidence from the rape kit still existed, from where it was
determined that Harrison was innocent. Similarly, Brewer was arrested in Missipiir
for killing his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter and was sent to death row.
A semen sample was recovered from the victim’s body but was “deemed
insufficient for DNA testing.” After some analysis of bite marks, which in fact
were of insect bites, advanced DNA testing was conducted, excluding Brewer to
be the possible perpetrator. In 2008, charges against Brewer were dropped and
he was free. Although further DNA testing allowed this man to be free, if DNA
testing was properly used before, the innocent man did not have to go through
what he had, and create faults in how crimes are solved.
In order to improve the use of DNA technology
to advance the cause of justice, the Attorney General is trying to stimulate
research and development of new methods of analyzing DNA samples under the
President’s initiative. The Attorney
General to create a National Forensic Science Commission to study rapidly
evolving advances in all areas of the forensic sciences and to make
recommendations to maximize the use of the forensic sciences in the criminal
justice system. The initiative will
devote $24.8 million to fund advances in the use of DNA technology (DOJ).
Add
Conclusion
TO BE ADDED:
-
detailed analysis of state and federal laws to make DNA
testing a legal tool by using the Criminal Research Service document
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Describe the importance of the emergence of Combined DNA
index system
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How DNA testing is
used as a tool to exonerate convicted people and why it has been a reliable
source. Heavily focus on the information provided by the U.S. Department of
Justice and the National Institute of Justice website
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ADD THE YOUTUBE VIDEO (POSSIBLY AS A HOOK)
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Possible solutions (eliminating backlogs, training
professionals, grants). Use Department of Justice website and Criminal Research
Service as powerful sources
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Body para 11: Use another source on Annie Dookhan and
transition to the conclusion using her story.
-
Add visual aids
Work Cited
“Help Us Put an End to Wrongful Convictions!” Innocence Project, Innocence Project,
Web. 7th
April 2018.
“Advancing Justice through DNA Technology: Using DNA to
Solve Crime.” The United States
Department of Justice, Web. 28 March 2018.
Seelye, Katharine Q., and Jess Bidgood. “Prison for a State
Chemist Who Faked Drug
Evidence.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2013.
Driscoll, SK 2014, '"I MESSED UP BAD": LESSONS ON THE
CONFRONTATION CLAUSE FROM THE ANNIE DOOKHAN SCANDAL', Arizona Law Review, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 707-740.
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