Josiah Sutton was convicted of rape. He was five inches shorter and 65 pounds lighter than the suspect described by the victim, but at trial a lab analyst testified that his DNA was found at the crime scene. His case looked like many others,arrest, swab, match, conviction. But there was just one problem,Sutton was innocent.We think of DNA forensics as an infallible science that catches the bad guys and exonerates the innocent. But when the science goes rogue, it can lead to a gross miscarriage of justice. Erin Murphy exposes the dark side of forensic DNA testing: crime labs that receive little oversight and produce inconsistent results prosecutors who push to test smaller and poorer-quality samples, inviting error and bias law-enforcement officers who compile massive, unregulated, and racially skewed DNA databases and industry lobbyists who push policies of stop and spit."DNA testing is rightly seen as a transformative technological breakthrough, but we should be wary of placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of the same broken criminal justice system that has produced mass incarceration, privileged government interests over personal privacy, and all too often enforced the law in a biased or unjust manner. Inside the Cell exposes the truth about forensic DNA, and shows us what it will take to harness the power of genetic identification in service of accuracy and fairness.
IS FORENSIC DNA THE NEXT FRONTIER OF GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE?
Current criminal justice policies have emboldened a system of mass incarceration, characterized by assembly-line justice, abuse of official power, racial and socioeconomic inequality, and unacceptable rates of wrongful conviction. Inside the Cell probes the scientific, statistical, legal, and ethical challenges presented by forensic DNA testing and explains how:
- DNA analysis is highly subjective, given the poor quality of many crime scene samples
- Crime labs operate with less oversight than your local nail salon
- DNA statistics can mislead jurors about the probability of a match
- Traces of DNA appear in places that a person never touched or visited
- Stop and spit might be the new stop and frisk
- Police use tricks to sneak DNA samples from discarded items
- DNA databases are racially skewed, and current policies only aggravate that inequality
- DNA tests uncover genetic traits beyond just useless junk
- Police maintain rogue databases unregulated by law
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