American Buddhist Net

If you are on a jury and you know that DNA-samples are not as reliable as the prosecutor or "expert witness" may be claiming they are, what do you do? ABN
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Genetic evidence is widely viewed as ironclad. In 'cold hit' cases, however, the truth is often elusive.

By Jason Felch and Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
1:53 PM PDT, May 3, 2008

..."It is only a matter of time until someone is wrongfully convicted because of this," said Keith Devlin, a Stanford mathematician who has studied the problem.

DNA profiles are widely perceived as a unique genetic fingerprint. In fact, they are slivers of the human genome -- up to 13 markers that contain about a millionth of the information on all the chromosomes. Relatives often share many markers, and even unrelated people on average share two or three.

So DNA "matches" by themselves can never definitively link someone to a crime.

The best science can do is to estimate the likelihood that a match has occurred by sheer chance. These statistics are easily distorted or misunderstood by lawyers, judges, juries and even expert witnesses.

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