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University of Michigan Law School

DNA Evidence

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

After The Dna Wars: Skirmishing With Nrc Ii, Richard O. Lempert Jul 1997

After The Dna Wars: Skirmishing With Nrc Ii, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This article traces some of the controversies surrounding DNA evidence and argues that although many have been laid to rest by scientific developments confirmed in the National Research Council's second DNA report, there remain several problems which are likely to lead to continued questioning of standard ways prosecutors present DNA evidence. Although much about the report is to be commended, it falls short in several ways, the most important of which is in its support for presenting random match probabilities independent of plausible error rates. The article argues that although one can sympathize with the NRC committee's decision as an …


The Honest Scientist's Guide To Dna Evidence, Richard O. Lempert Jan 1995

The Honest Scientist's Guide To Dna Evidence, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

Thank you for your invitation to participate in the DNA symposium. As you know DNA has never been a prime research focus of mine, and I have been so preoccupied with my own work on ITPT (intertemporal personal transportation) that I thought I must decline. Happily, however, the two projects came together, for I recently had an amazing breakthrough during which by coincidence I stumbled across a book entitled A Century of DNA Testing and holocopied (a fancy form of Xeroxing) the following few pages for you.


The Honest Scientist's Guide To Dna Evidence, Richard O. Lempert Jan 1995

The Honest Scientist's Guide To Dna Evidence, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

The honest scientist recognizes that she herself is a test instrument, and a fallible one at that. Subjectivity inescapably enters into any human endeavor, and should not be denied. DNA testing is rife with subjective elements, no place more so than at the crucial stage of deciding whether a match exists. On the one hand, non-matching extraneous bands may sometimes be properly disregarded and patterns that do not quite meet objective matching criteria may be appropriately regarded as incriminatory matches. On the other hand, band patterns that do meet objective matching criteria may be treated as exonerative depending on how …