Errors, Systematic Errors & DNA

In recent months there have been a number of discussions concerning the innocent people having their biological information retained on the national DNA database, which goes against European court ruling in 2008. Even now, many individuals still find it difficult to expunge their biological information from the national DNA database.

The excellent marketing of DNA profiling technology, would give the impression that this technology is 99.9% accurate and is virtually a foolproof system which is wholly accepted by UK and US courts. In support of this assumption the crime rate has significantly reduced. For example out of a possible 65,350 investigations in the US, 65,000 yielded positive results. According, to the FBI in 2004, when DNA evidence is collected in criminal investigations, over a million and a half arrests were made for property violations, a similar number for any related crimes and just over 0.5 million arrests were made for violent crime. In 2004, the Home Office (UK) reported that for every 100 domestic burglaries taken place, 14 have been detected without the use of DNA. If DNA evidence is recovered at the scene of the crime than 48 burglaries has been detected out of a possible 100. Thus giving a 3.5 fold increase in the annual detection rate. These figures seem to be very impressive for law enforcement agencies to solve serious crimes.

However, there is a negative side to the implementation of DNA profiling, it would appear there is a number of innocent individuals still lock up behind bars for a crime they did not commit. Where is the evidence to support this notion? Over a quarter of a century, DNA identification technology has been used in the UK and only 5 individuals have successfully refuted DNA evidence. The contradictory evidence includes the following: suspect has never traveled abroad before; or the suspect has a serious illness, which the individual is unable to walk or dress themselves. However, what is important is that non-scientific arguments, which have been put forward to the courts or the police to have DNA evidence thrown out of court or have the charges dropped. Only one case in the UK in which DNA evidence was successfully challenged with scientific arguments and this was with the assistance of foreign DNA experts. On the surface, if only five UK cases in which forensic identification was incorrect out of 4.8 million people on the DNA database, seems quite impressive. The reason for this low figure, the police forensic scientists do not provide the defense counsel the full details of how DNA tests were conducted or excluded essential results, thus giving the opportunity of forensic scientist to misrepresent DNA tests or exaggerating statistical data. This does however; suggest the police forensic scientists are not so independent from the Crown Prosecution Service.

Further evidence to support this line of thought may be derived from the Sean Hoey case, whom was charged for terrorism and murder. It was this case in which Scientific arguments was used to overturn DNA evidence in a courtroom environment. The forensic scientists acting on behalf of the Crown Prosecution come from the Forensic Science Service in the midlands. They used a controversial technique called Low Copy Number DNA profiling, which is only used by two other countries apart from the UK. The forensic Science Service has several other centers in the UK and not one scientist disagreed with this controversial technique. Despite this, leading forensic scientist from the US and Australia have severe doubts about this technique.

Other evidence that supports the lack of independence of UK forensic scientists may be drawn from the US experience. The US has the largest national DNA database in the world with 5.2 million, which is comparable to that of the UK in terms of magnitude. The Innocence Project alone has released over 250 individuals from prison cells due to faulty forensic evidence. This group carried out a analysis of all men freed from US prisons and surprisingly they found US forensic scientist subjectively interpret DNA results, exaggerated results, altering laboratory records, suppress or do not explain anomalous results. There is no reason why this practice should not occur in the UK. In addition, to this over 70% of the innocent freed from US prisons by the Innocent project are African-American origin. It is plausible that the UK national DNA database, which holds a disproportionate number of black young men on its database, is not guilty of crimes they did not commit?

Give us your opinion of this article.

Further information can be found from the book titled Errors, Systematic Errors & DNA, by Dr Parker. http://www.drpdna.com/