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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rounding Up The Usual Suspects: A Logical And Legal Analysis Of Dna Trawling Cases, David H. Kaye
Rounding Up The Usual Suspects: A Logical And Legal Analysis Of Dna Trawling Cases, David H. Kaye
Journal Articles
Courts are beginning to confront a problem that has divided the scientific community - whether identifying a defendant by fishing through a database of DNA types to find a match to a crime-scene sample reduces the significance of a match. For years, the problem seemed academic. Now that the U.S. has more than five million DNA profiles from convicted offenders and suspects in a national, computer-searchable database, the question has assumed more urgency. Increasingly, individuals are being charged with crimes as a result of a match between their recorded profile and the DNA from a victim or scene of a …
Case Comment - People V. Nelson: A Tale Of Two Statistics, David H. Kaye
Case Comment - People V. Nelson: A Tale Of Two Statistics, David H. Kaye
Journal Articles
In recent years, defendants who were identified as a result of a search through a database of DNA profiles have argued that the probability that a randomly selected person would match a crime-scene stain overstates the probative value of the match. The statistical literature is divided, with most statisticians who have written on the subject rejecting this claim. In People v. Nelson, the Supreme Court of California held that when the random-match probability is so small as to make it exceedingly unlikely that any unrelated individual has the incriminating DNA profile, this statistic is admissible in a database-search case. …