Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Evidence
Fortuity And Forensic Familial Identification, Natalie Ram
Fortuity And Forensic Familial Identification, Natalie Ram
All Faculty Scholarship
On July 7, 2010, Los Angeles police announced the arrest of a suspect in the Grim Sleeper murders, so called because of a decade-long hiatus in killings. The break in the case came when California searched its state DNA database for a genetic profile similar, but not identical, to the killer’s. DNA is inherited in specific and predictable ways, so a source-excluding partial match might indicate that a close genetic relative of the matching offender was the Grim Sleeper. California’s apparent success in this case has intensified interest in policymaking for source-excluding partial matching. To date, however, little information about …
Where Are The Records? Handling Lost/Destroyed Records In Child Welfare Tort Litigation, Dale Margolin Cecka
Where Are The Records? Handling Lost/Destroyed Records In Child Welfare Tort Litigation, Dale Margolin Cecka
Law Faculty Publications
As child welfare professionals, we have all encountered the “missing” record, most often during day-to-day advocacy. For those who practice child welfare tort litigation, incomplete discovery is also common, even though case records can be critical in determining negligence or malfeasance. In other forms of civil litigation, judges are asked to hold parties accountable for losing or destroying records, and juries are allowed to draw negative inferences about the missing evidence. In contrast, an investigation of child welfare torts reveals that when a defending agency fails to produce credible records, the issue is simply not litigated or does not affect …