Dna Testing Case Study

DNA collection is a good thing not only can it help catch the person responsible for an illegal crime, but it can also clear up a suspect’s name. In the case of Maryland v. King on April 2009 Alonzo Jay King was charged for first and second degree assault for scarring a crowd of people with a shotgun, he was arrested and as a part of their booking procedure, they swabbed Alonzo Jay King for his DNA. Kings DNA sample later resulted to be a match of a DNA sample in the system “CODIS” of a rape victim by the name of Vonette W.’s Salisbury. Vonnette was raped on September 2003 but had not gotten justice for the crime against her since the only evidence was the DNA sample of the semen that was swabbed. No matches were found in the data base until Alonzo Jay King was arrested. By collecting DNA, it can help lead to an arrest of a suspect and to be able to close cases.

The first DNA-based conviction in the United States occurred shortly after in 1987 when the Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida, convicted Tommy Lee Andrews of rape after DNA tests matched his DNA from a blood sample with that of semen traces found in a rape victim (Calandro, 2005). It was two years later that DNA was again ruled admissible in a Virginia state ruling. In the years that followed the use of DNA in trial proceeding was not disputed. It was not until the technique of obtaining the evidence was more largely used did the practice become questionable.

The guns bullets at Tyrell’s house matched up with the ones at the crime scene.

DNA profiling was at first made as a framework for choosing paternity, in which tests taken under clinical conditions were examined for innate affirmation that could association watchman to adolescent. It initially progressed into the courts in 1986, when police in England asked sub-nuclear analyst Alec Jeffrey’s, who had begun looking at the use of DNA for wrongdoing scene examination, to use DNA to check the confirmation of a 17 year-old child in two ambush murders in the English Midlands. The tests showed the youngster was frankly not the offender and the genuine attacker was over the long haul found, furthermore using DNA testing.

There have been many cases over the years within in the criminal justice system where people have walked free from committing a crime as well as those being put behind bars for being accused of committing a crime they never committed. DNA testing in the criminal justice system can be the decision maker for someone who is either going to walk free from the crime they possibly committed or get put behind bars for a crime they may have not committed. DNA testing has been used to sentence hundreds and convict thousands of people across the country every year. DNA evidence is one of the best examples on how technology has made convicting the criminals who have committed a crime much easier than it has been done in the past. DNA evidence does not necessarily pinpoint the exact criminal on who have may commited the crime, but it does bring it down to a handful of the population who are being questioned for the crime. It is one of the most accurate ways of finding out evidence as long as it is properly done and handled correctly.

DNA profiling can also be used to compare the DNA of a mother, her child, and the purported father can settle a question of paternity. An example is when DNA profiling proved that Thomas Jefferson or a close relative father a child of a slave named

DNA is certain characteristics that identifies a person by race, hair color, and their sex. Technology had changed the criminal justice tremendously and DNA is a prime example of how much technology has changed the aspect of the criminal justice system. When the DNA is used in an investigation it is used to help with identifying a suspect for committing a crime. The impact that DNA has had on the criminal justice system is that it has changed the way DNA is handled, collected, and the importance of DNA. DNA has revolutionized the criminal justice system in a major way because cold cases has been solved, people have cleared from murder cases, and it has been a vital source for information in criminal cases. The case of a Florida man by name

DNA evidence is extremely helpful in criminal trials not only because it can determine the guilt of a suspect, but also because it can keep innocent people from going to jail. The suspect must leave a sample of their DNA at the crime scene in order for testing to occur, but DNA can be found in the form of many things such as semen, blood, hair, saliva, or skin scrapings. According to Newsweek, "thousands of people have been convicted by DNA's nearly miraculous ability to search out suspects across space and time… hundreds of innocent people have also been freed, often after years behind bars, sometimes just short of the death chamber" (Adler ). Though some may think it is a waste of time to go

There have been many incidents where cases have needed a solid prosecution in order to convict the defendant in a murder or rape case. This is where DNA Testing comes in to help. By taking a DNA test, a person can be found guilty or not guilty. If a person claims they have been raped there can be a sperm sample taken from the suspect in order to prove that he is guilty or not. In addition, in a murder case there can be blood taken from the suspect so they can tell of his innocence. There are several ways to determine whether a person is guilty or not by this method. Many cases have begun to use this method saying that it is foolproof. People say this is the method of the future of crime

Before the 1980s, courts relied on testimony and eyewitness accounts as a main source of evidence. Notoriously unreliable, these techniques have since faded away to the stunning reliability of DNA forensics. In 1984, British geneticist Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester discovered an interesting new marker in the human genome. Most DNA information is the same in every human, but the junk code between genes is unique to every person. Junk DNA used for investigative purposes can be found in blood, saliva, perspiration, sexual fluid, skin tissue, bone marrow, dental pulp, and hair follicles (Butler, 2011). By analyzing this junk code, Jeffreys found certain sequences of 10 to 100 base pairs repeated multiple times. These tandem

In addition to undeserved charges, DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of people for crimes in which they were convicted over the past few years. When DNA testing became readily available to the criminal justice system, crucial flaws began to surface. It was realized that people were serving hard-time for felony crimes they didn’t commit.

Before any release, there must be proper evidence showing that the accused had nothing to do with the crime. The introduction of the first person using DNA to prove his innocent was David Vasquez. In 1985, he was convicted, later in 1990; he was released due to DNA evidence (O’Leary, 2012). Since the Vasquez case, DNA testing has been a very powerful technique to use to prove a person’s innocence. A great reason for this is because victims are capable of lying and misidentifying.

Even with vast majorities of new technology today, DNA testing still finds people guilty in trials even when they didn’t commit the crime. America is known for having one of the most fair-minded criminal justice systems. We give every person, who is arrested, the chance to be proven innocent until they are found guilty through evidence. Within these trials, DNA tests account for a majority of the convictions or exonerations.

Will the use of forensic DNA in the courts be the equalizer for the wrongly convicted? Per the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been 1,916 exonerations in the United States since 1989 (“National Registry of Exonerations,” n.d.). Barry Scheck and The Innocence Project have been instrumental in facilitating the exoneration process by presenting forensic DNA evidence to American courtrooms. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material that lies within the nucleus of all cells in humans and other living organisms. Each person’s DNA is unique, and only identical twins share the exact DNA (Vocabulary.com, 2016). Quite by accidents, while conducting research in his laboratory, Sir Alec Jeffreys developed the technique for the biological ID of any person using only a tiny sample of their DNA (Royal Society of Biologists, 2016, p. 16). Since the introduction, the use of forensic DNA has manifested a major impact upon the prosecution, juries, and the wrongly convicted in the American Court System.

In McClure, Weisburd and Wilson (2008) summary article arguing that in addition to bench science, field experimentation involving forensic methods is key to assess the utility of various methods to solve crimes. The study reflected that there is a need for more research into many aspects of forensic science, criticizing the strength of scientific evidence that’s collected at a crime scene and interpretations of most forensic methods while omitting DNA testing. McClure et al’s (2008) explains that in sexual cases and homicides, the presence of DNA evidence actually increased the likelihood of prosecution and a conviction. According to the article “…the case of convictions, the odds-ratio for the presence of DNA evidence was 33.1 for sexual offenses and 23.1 for homicides” (McClure et al., 2008). Subsequently, the research shows that there was a consistent gradual decline in the national homicide rates that began in the 1900s and continued through into the 21st century. The decline of homicides in the US has dropped by from more than 90% in the 1960s to 62% in 2003. Even though this significant drop has occurred during the introduction of the new DNA testing