DNA evidence

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Scientists Find Way to Distinguish Twins' DNA

Researchers may have just made prosecutors' lives easier

(Newser) - Identical twins share an identical DNA profile, and when you're an investigator examining DNA evidence, that can be a problem. The cases may be rare, but they exist, legal expert Jennifer Mnookin told the New York Times last year amid a rape case involving a suspect with a twin:...

How Rapists Who Wear Condoms Could Be Caught
How Rapists Who Wear Condoms Could Be Caught
new study
Dec 17, 2014 8:39 AM CST

How Rapists Who Wear Condoms Could Be Caught

Bacterial profiles of pubic hair so unique they could identify perpetrators

(Newser) - Investigators routinely analyze pubic hairs found at crime scenes where rape is suspected, but it's rare that the hair has its root, and thus sufficient DNA to identify its former owner. Now researchers say that bacterial colonies on pubic hairs appear to be so unique to an individual that...

Suspects Re-Enact Brutal Thai Murders

Cops say 2 have confessed to killing Hannah Witheridge, David Miller

(Newser) - Thai police say DNA evidence is a match for two Burmese men who've confessed to killing two British tourists . Sporting helmets and handcuffs, the suspects today re-enacted the crime—a typical practice used by Thai law enforcement—on the Koh Tao island beach where the murders were committed last...

Lubbock, Texas, Makes Sure It Remembers Its Mistake

Statue unveiled for Tim Cole, who was wrongly jailed for rape

(Newser) - In 1986, a Texas Tech student was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the rape of 20-year-old Michele Mallin. Tim Cole endured his incarceration with optimism and faith, encouraging his sister to finish law school and donating to charity with money from his GI Bill from prison—an especially...

Author: DNA Test Pegs Jack the Ripper

Polish Jew Aaron Kosminski was the killer, author says

(Newser) - An amateur detective has written a new book that claims to reveal the real Jack the Ripper based on DNA evidence from a blood-soaked shawl found by one of the victims. Russell Edwards, author of Naming Jack the Ripper, writes in the Daily Mail that he bought the shawl at...

Jenise's Dad Looked Out for Teen Held in Her Murder

17-year-old will be tried as an adult for rape and murder

(Newser) - Not long after the body of 6-year-old Jenise Wright was found in a 4-foot bog near her family's mobile home in Bremerton, Wash., DNA evidence on her clothing led investigators to 17-year-old family friend Gabriel Zebediah Gaeta. Jenise's father, James Wright, tells NBC News he'd mentored Gabriel:...

DNA Used to Catch Man Voting Over and Over

Robert Monroe cast 5 ballots in Wisconsin recall vote: police

(Newser) - How convinced may Robert Monroe have been that his vote in the 2012 presidential election mattered? So much so that the Wisconsin man allegedly cast an in-person absentee ballot in Shorewood on Nov. 1 then rented a car and drove some 250 miles to Lebanon, Ind., five days later, using...

Police to Do 527 DNA Tests to Find Student's Rapist

All male students, staff at French high school asked to give samples

(Newser) - Male students and staff at a high school in western France—527 people in total—were asked to give DNA samples beginning today as police search for the assailant who raped a teenage girl. The La Rochelle prosecutor's office said tests were expected to last from today through Wednesday...

Exonerations Hit All-Time High

 Exonerations Hit All-Time High 
new study
Feb 4, 2014 7:35 AM CST

Exonerations Hit All-Time High

Prosecutors more willing to revisit cases, study says

(Newser) - More wrongfully convicted people were exonerated last year than ever before in the US, a study by two law schools behind the National Registry of Exonerations finds. Some 87 people were found to have been wrongfully convicted, compared to 83 in 2009, the study's previous high, per the New ...

DNA Leads to Conviction in 22-Year-Old Rape-Murder

San Francisco man raped, killed woman in burglary case: jury

(Newser) - A San Francisco man who went to prison decades ago as a burglar has now been convicted of raping and murdering a woman in 1991. Otis Hughes, 61, was imprisoned for burglary after the death of Karen Wong, whose apartment appeared to have been ransacked, police said. After he was...

Arrest in Grisly '96 Killing, as Another Guy Does Time for It

Jason Ryan arrested in 1996 murder of Geraldine Montgomery

(Newser) - Police just yesterday arrested a man in a 17-year-old rape and murder case. Just one wrinkle: Another man is already serving life in prison for the crime. The horrific murder of Geraldine Montgomery shocked the small town of Kalkaska, Mich., in 1996, NBC News reports. The 68-year-old widow was beaten...

Accused Rapist's Defense: My Twin Did It

Aaron Lucas says his brother perpetrated sexual assaults

(Newser) - An Army lieutenant accused of sexually assaulting several young girls will be allowed to make an unusual defense at trial: his brother did it, the AP reports. DNA samples have linked the officer, Aaron Lucas, to three of the crimes, but the siblings share the same DNA. "I have...

Cat DNA Database Helps Convict British Killer

Good news, though: Tinker the cat is OK

(Newser) - CSI Meow-i? A newly created DNA database of British cats has helped convict a killer. The University of Leicester today said its catalog of feline DNA buttressed the prosecution case against David Hilder, who was convicted of manslaughter last month at a court in the English city of Winchester. It'...

Court Staffer Fired for Helping Wrongfully Convicted Man

70-year-old great grandmother gave him a public document

(Newser) - Sharon Snyder is 70 years old. She's a great grandmother and has been working at a Missouri court for 34 years. In 2011, she gave an imprisoned man trying to overturn a 27-year-old rape conviction a public document to help him seek DNA tests. Last month, those DNA tests...

DNA: This Guy Was the Boston Strangler

Albert DeSalvo confessed, then recanted before he died

(Newser) - DNA evidence appears to at least partially confirm what many had already suspected: that Alberto DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. Authorities have already produced a "familial match" using DeSalvo's relatives, and are exhuming DeSalvo himself in hopes of directly linking him to the last of the Strangler's...

Bite Mark Evidence May Soon Be Kicked Out of Court

New court case may end controversial method for good

(Newser) - At least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bite marks on the flesh of victims have been exonerated since 2000, many after spending more than a decade in prison. Now a judge's ruling later this month in New York could help end the practice...

Could DNA Finally Explain 98 Reform School Deaths?

Dozens of children died at Florida school between 1914 and 1973

(Newser) - Between 1914 and 1973, a Florida reform school—once the nation's largest—saw 98 deaths, of which 96 were children between ages 6 and 18, researchers have confirmed. But the deaths remain cloaked in mystery, and many of the bodies have never been recovered. Now, researchers at the University...

For Cops, DNA Databases Are the New Fingerprints

Departments around the country keeping profiles

(Newser) - Across the country, local cops are quietly building DNA databases in much the same way they might build a fingerprint catalog, the New York Times reports. New York City has the genetic info of some 11,000 suspects on file, and Orange County, Calif., makes even that trove look tiny,...

Supreme Court DNA Ruling Has Scary Echoes of Gattaca

Decision opens path to swabbing without suspicion: Noah Feldman

(Newser) - In a 5-4 decision yesterday , the Supreme Court ruled that those arrested for "serious crimes" can have DNA samples taken from their cheeks—even without suspicion. And that "represents a major step toward a Gattaca world," writes Noah Feldman at Bloomberg . In short, evidence can now be...

Supreme Court Upholds DNA Swabs of Those Under Arrest

Not a violation of 4th Amendment

(Newser) - DNA swabbing the cheek of a person arrested—but not yet convicted—for a "serious offense" is just as acceptable as fingerprinting and photographing that person, the Supreme Court ruled today. Such DNA swabs do not violate a person's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches, the justices found....

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