At 07:50 PM 1/28/03 +0000, Ken Brown wrote: ...
Yep. Imagine leaving twenty random peoples' fingerprints at the scene along with your own. You might confuse the police for awhile, but eventually, they'd find the set of prints that matched with the suspect they were holding....Think - you are a suspect. They find 2 human DNA signals at the scene of the crime, one from you, one from someone quite different from you. Well, they can look for the other guy in their own time, but they've got you. If they are using a stringent enough test (often they don't) the odds against it not being you are huge.
The creepier thing here is the possibility of planting DNA evidence, which seems very easy to me. It wouldn't be a big surprise if this had been done by now. A really careful investigation might detect the fraud, but if the planted evidence points in a really plausible direction anyway (e.g., the apparent murderer is the husband/ex-husband/disgruntled business partner/drug dealer of the victim), it may be hard to get anyone to take a second look at the data.
The scary number of death-row inmates who've been more-or-less proven innocent by DNA evidence implies that the police, prosecutors, judges, and juries just aren't all that careful about checking the plausibility of evidence anyway.
...
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
