Databases and laboratories had to meet uniform standards. And uniform testing procedures had to be established. DNA evidence also helped free several unjustly imprisoned people, giving rise to new areas of concerns and ethical considerations for scientists and lawyers. His colleagues in the field also spotted other applications for DNA work, such as mapping the human genome.
In , the Human Genome Project launched. Within 13 years, the team had completed what it set out to do. The work involved an ethical, legal and social implications ELSI program that began to set parameters around DNA research, its uses and its impacts.
The most pressing issue right now — seems like a pedestrian one, but boy, we need to solve it. She was the only lamb to survive out of attempts.
Before long, fruit flies and mice had had their DNA mapped. And by late in the year , German researchers had mapped the DNA of a 38,year-old Neanderthal, opening a massive portal to understanding human origins and evolution. Scientists also realized the potential of mapping viruses and bacteria, which could give way to new and exciting breakthroughs in healthcare.
Since then, however, scientific knowledge of and public interest in genetics has flourished. DNA is advancing into new frontiers across a range of industries. Each of these industrial changes raises a new crop of ethical questions.
Creating genealogical databases filled with DNA information could be hacked by bad actors. Genetic counseling could veer into eugenics. Letters were sent to every male born between and , who had lived or worked in the Narborough area in recent years, asking them to agree to give a blood sample.
Two testing centres were established, in a local school and a council office, and there were two testing sessions, morning and evening, three days a week. Each man was expected to bring proof of identity. It was a voluntary scheme, and a few men declined, some saying they did not like needles, one or two saying they did not like police officers. But most of these men soon changed their minds.
The horror at the crimes — and the fear that the killer could strike again — resulted in those with reservations coming under considerable social pressure. By the end of the month, around 1, men had volunteered to give samples, and the forensic science laboratories that were conducting the tests were struggling to keep up. The process quickly drew national and international attention.
There were complaints from some, with the National Council for Civil Liberties — as the UK rights group Liberty was formerly known — highlighting the risk of human error and suggesting that parliament needed to consider the implications of mass screening programmes.
After eight months, 5, men had given blood samples and only one had refused. But there was no match with the semen samples. Police began to expand the hunt. Among those who were recorded as having given a sample was Colin Pitchfork, a year-old baker and father of two young children.
Three years earlier, he had been questioned about his movements on the evening that Lynda had been murdered. He had said, quite correctly, that he had been looking after his young son. The conversation turned to Pitchfork, and Kelly confessed that he had impersonated him, in order to take the blood test on his behalf.
Kelly explained that Pitchfork had asked for this favour because he had already taken the test, for a friend who had a conviction for indecent exposure when he was younger. Six weeks later, one of the people in the pub relayed this conversation to a local policeman. Kelly was promptly arrested, and by the end of the day Pitchfork was also in custody.
She was there and I was there. He then gave a detailed confession to both murders and two other sexual assaults. When he raped and killed Lynda Mann, his car had been parked nearby, and his baby son had been asleep in the back of it. DNA testing confirmed him as the double killer.
The following January Pitchfork appeared at Leicester crown court, where he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, two of rape, two of indecent assault and one count of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and in accordance with the practice at that time, the home secretary, Douglas Hurd, set his minimum term: 30 years.
What made the warrant noteworthy was that the suspect was identified only by his DNA profile. This was the first known case in which prosecutors sought arrest warrants based solely on a DNA description. Dabney's attorney sought to dismiss the claim because Dabney was not named in the original complaint until after a six-year statute of limitations had expired.
In September , the Wisconsin state legislature effected new changes to the statute of limitations. This legislation expressly addresses DNA evidence and extends the time limits for such cases. The amendments permit prosecution any time within 12 months of the time a DNA match results in a probable identification of a person. When she found a nightgown and stained bed sheets in their home, she wrapped them in a plastic bag.
When the sheets and nightgown were examined by a Denver laboratory, it confirmed that the DNA on the items belonged to another woman. Although the husband eventually challenged the "bad boy" clause, the judge ruled that the DNA evidence was admissible as evidence of the adultery.
Science may eventually solve many of the problems regarding DNA evidence. In the meantime, debate over its use has already led to changes that will allow courts and juries to better assess the guilt or innocence of criminal suspects. Washington, D. Federal Judicial Center.
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. New York: Lexis Publishing. National Institute for Justice. No court has rejected DNA evidence on the grounds that the underlying scientific theory is invalid. However, some courts have excluded it from evidence because of problems with the possible contamination of samples, questions surrounding the significance of its statistical probabilities, and laboratory errors.
Several states have passed laws that recognize DNA evidence as admissible in criminal cases, and others have enacted laws that specifically admit DNA evidence to help resolve civil paternity cases. The Frye test, which comes from the case Frye v. United States F. By the s, 45 states had adopted this common-law standard for the admission of novel scientific evidence. The U. Supreme Court overruled use of the Frye test in federal courts in its decision Daubert v.
Merrell Dow , U. It found that Frye provides too stringent a test and that it is incompatible with the federal rules, which allow the admission of all evidence that has "any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence" Fed.
The Court found that judges have a responsibility to "ensure that any and all scientific testimony or evidence admitted is not only relevant, but reliable.
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