Law Commons^™

Beyond Abortion: Human Genetics And The New Eugenics, John R. Harding Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Stifling Scientific Progress: The District Court’S Decision In Myriad, Seth R. Ogden

Intellectual Property Brief

No abstract provided.

Policing Identity, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Identity has long played a critical role in policing. Learning “who” an individual is not only affords police knowledge of possible criminal history, but also of “what” an individual might have done. To date, however, these matters have eluded sustained scholarly attention, a deficit that has assumed ever greater significance as government databases have become more comprehensive and powerful. Identity evidence, in short, has and continues to suffer from an identity crisis, which this Article seeks to remedy. The Article does so by first surveying the methods historically used by police to identify individuals, from nineteenth-century efforts to measure bodies …

A Tale Of Two Sciences, Erin Murphy

Michigan Law Review

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . .. . So might one describe the contrasting portraits of DNA's ascension in the criminal justice system that are drawn in David Kaye's The Double Helix and the Law of Evidence and Sheldon Krimsky and Tania Simoncelli's Genetic Justice: DNA Data Banks, Criminal Investigations, and Civil Liberties. For Kaye, the double helix stands as the icon of twenty-first-century achievement, a science menaced primarily by the dolts (lawyers, judges, and the occasional analyst) who misuse it. For Krimsky and Simoncelli, DNA is a seductive forensic tool that is …

Exonerations In The United States, 1989-2012: Report By The National Registry Of Exonerations, Samuel R. Gross, Michael Shaffer

Other Publications

This report is about 873 exonerations in the United States, from January 1989 through February 2012. Behind each is a story, and almost all are tragedies. The tragedies are not limited to the exonerated defendants themselves, or to their families and friends. In most cases they were convicted of vicious crimes in which other innocent victims were killed or brutalized. Many of the victims who survived were traumatized all over again, years later, when they learned that the criminal who had attacked them had not been caught and punished after all, and that they themselves may have played a role …

Sacrificing Liberty For Security: North Carolina's Unconstitutional Search And Seizure Of Arrestee Dna, Michael J. Crook

Campbell Law Review

This Comment examines the constitutionality of North Carolina’s DNA Database Act of 2010. The Act is a newly passed expansion of the existing state DNA database, and this Comment argues that North Carolina’s expansion authorizes a constitutionally impermissible, mandatory, suspicionless, and warrantless search and seizure of DNA and the information contained therein. With warrantless searches, the default rule is that they are “per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment— subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” The Act should not survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny because it does not qualify as a well-delineated exception to the warrant requirement: …

Competing Paradigms? The Use Of Dna Powers In Youth Justice, Liz Campbell

Faculty Scholarship

Collecting deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from crime scenes and individuals is now regarded as a critical element of effective criminal investigation and prosecution. Numerous benefits are said to accrue from the gathering and comparison of DNA evidence: suspects may be speedily identified, innocent parties ruled out, the wrongfully convicted exonerated and some would-be criminal actors deterred. Retention of DNA in state controlled databases allows for speculative searching to identify subsequent offending and to provide leads for unsolved crimes. The collection and retention of convicted adults’ DNA has been held by European and US courts to be a proportionate incursion on human …

Convenient Scapegoats: Juvenile Confessions And Exculpatory Dna In Cook County, Il, Joshua A. Tepfer, Craig M. Cooley, Tara Thompson

Faculty Working Papers

In the Winter of 2011-2012, in two different cases known as the Dixmoor Five and the Englewood Four, nine men were exonerated of rapes and murders based on exculpatory post-conviction DNA testing. Seven of these nine men actually confessed to the crime. This article explores these two cases and how the Cook County law enforcement agencies, including the State's Attorney's Office, dealt with the powerful new DNA results.

Adjudicated Juveniles And Post-Conviction Litigation, Joshua A. Tepfer, Laura H. Nirider

Faculty Working Papers

Post-conviction relief is a vital part of the American justice system. By filing post-conviction petitions after the close of direct appeal, defendants can raise claims based on evidence outside the record that was not known or available at the time of trial. One common use of post-conviction relief is to file a claim related to a previously unknown constitutional violation that occurred at trial, such as ineffective assistance of counsel. If a defendant's trial attorney performed ineffectively by failing to call, for instance, an alibi witness, then that omission is unlikely to be reflected in the trial record -- but …

Genes 101: Are Human Genes Patentable Subject Matter?, Andrew Bowman

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Genes are the fundamental building blocks of all living things. They dictate hair color, eye color, even susceptibility to cancer. As such, genes inherently possess untold power. The ability of a sole company to wield this omnipotence makes a human gene patent highly sought after.

Clearly Erroneous: The Court Of Appeals Of Maryland’S Misguided Shift To A Higher Standard For Post-Conviction Dna Relief, Christine E. White

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Better Balancing: Reconsidering Pre-Conviction Dna Extraction From Federal Arrestees, Joy Radice

Scholarly Works

Federal law mandates the collection of a biological sample from anyone arrested by federal authorities or facing federal charges, regardless of the charge. The FBI then creates a DNA profile from the sample and enters that profile into the Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”), a national database through which law enforcement matches individuals and crime scene DNA evidence.

Part I of the essay briefly reviews the federal statute that authorizes pre-conviction DNA extraction and the Fourth Amendment principles that underlie the current constitutional challenges to it. Part II identifies the various, and sometimes competing, rationales offered to justify the constitutionality …