| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
28 Sep 2003 04:22:33 AM |
| Object: |
The Real Problem With DNA Tests |
DNA Tests Can Free the Innocent. How Can We Ignore That?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37776-2003Sep19.html
By William S. Sessions
Sunday, September 21, 2003; Page B02
When I became the director of the FBI in 1987, the forensic use of DNA
to find and convict wrongdoers was just emerging as a tool in criminal
investigations and trials. This "genetic fingerprinting" provided an
entirely new capability in the effort to separate the guilty from the
innocent. In early 1988, the FBI Laboratory Division created a DNA
testing lab; by year's end, testing was completed in 100 active cases.
I was fully expecting the results to confirm the careful investigative
and evaluative work that had gone into the decisions to prosecute
these suspects.
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| User: "maff" |
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| Title: Re: The Real Problem With DNA Tests |
19 Oct 2003 04:15:37 AM |
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(maff) wrote in message news:<18510aff.0309280128.2980f06f@posting.google.com>...
DNA Tests Can Free the Innocent. How Can We Ignore That?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37776-2003Sep19.html
By William S. Sessions
Sunday, September 21, 2003; Page B02
When I became the director of the FBI in 1987, the forensic use of DNA
to find and convict wrongdoers was just emerging as a tool in criminal
investigations and trials. This "genetic fingerprinting" provided an
entirely new capability in the effort to separate the guilty from the
innocent. In early 1988, the FBI Laboratory Division created a DNA
testing lab; by year's end, testing was completed in 100 active cases.
I was fully expecting the results to confirm the careful investigative
and evaluative work that had gone into the decisions to prosecute
these suspects.
Convicted for crimes that never happened
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1065342,00.html
Following last week's Annual Miscarriage of Justice Day Michael
Naughton finds a new category of perverse jury verdicts where the
innocent face jail for crimes which never occurred.
Sunday October 19, 2003
The common view of a miscarriage of justice victim is of a person
wrongly convicted for a crime that they did not, in fact, commit. More
familiar accounts of the causes of miscarriages of justice have
focused upon cases of successful appeal against criminal conviction
and charted the reasons given by the appeal courts for the initial
conviction, most often the perennial problem of prosecution
non-disclosure, police error or misconduct, problems with
identification, false confessions, perjury or poor defence.
The popular reason cited for miscarriages of justice is that the
police and prosecution services are under an enormous pressure, from
both government and the public, to tackle rising crime - because the
criminal justice system is a human system this leads to inevitable
mistakes where innocent victims are unintended casualties in the
battle for law and order. There is at least some theoretical merit to
that when a crime has actually been committed. But what about the
untold number of innocent people who are currently being convicted for
crimes that have never occurred?
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