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The article focuses on decision of California Supreme Court in the case People v. Buza which upheld California's DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act (DNA) under both the Fourth Amendment. It mentions court affirmed Buza's misdemeanor conviction for refusing to provide a DNA sample when he was arrested for felony arson. It also mentions step in the wrong direction for criminal procedural rights.

Many cities and states have taken steps to identify and process all untested sexual assault kits (SAKs). Texas was one of the first states to enact such legislation—SB 1636—which created a time line for a statewide audit and mandatory testing of SAKs. A mixed-methods approach was used to assess the effects of SB 1636 at both state and local levels. The study did not detect any effect of SB 1636 on reporting, arrests, or convictions. The legislation did have a significant effect on criminal justice workloads, particularly crime laboratories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the necessity for a U.S. federal legislation that regulates the use of familial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) searching in criminal investigations in light of the Golden State Killer case investigation in California. Topics discussed include the controversy over the use of a DNA data bank in the identification of suspect Joseph DeAngelo, developments in the use of DNA analysis in police investigation, and the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence on search and seizure.

Objectives: We examined 1200 sexual assault cold cases from Denver, Colorado to ascertain the rate of successful prosecution in which there was a DNA suspect match and the cost per conviction.Results: Nearly 40% of the cases in which there was a DNA match failed to result in an arrest or prosecution primarily because victims were uncooperative or their testimony was judged to be unreliable. Other factors affecting conviction included crime context, victim availability, and the ability of the defendant to mount a consensual sex defense. Once an arrest had been made, however, the conviction rate exceeded 90%. We estimate that Denver's sexual assault DNA testing program cost roughly $16,000 per conviction.Conclusion: Our results lend strong support to the value of testing sexual assault kits (SAKs) even in cold cases. This suggests that programs such as Federal Solving Cold Cases with DNA Program are well worth the investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of U.S. law enforcement agencies have disclosed that they have large numbers of untested sexual assault kits (SAKs; also called “rape kits”) in police property storage. Whether previously untested SAKs should be tested for DNA evidence has been the subject of considerable public debate. To inform policy and practice regarding rape kit testing, the current study tested a sample of 900 previously unsubmitted SAKs from Detroit, Michigan, and documented the DNA forensic testing outcomes associated with those kits. We assessed how many SAKs yielded DNA profiles eligible for upload into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the federal DNA criminal database; how many resulted in a DNA match (termed a “CODIS hit”); and how many of those hits were associated to other sexual assault crimes (i.e., serial sexual assault hits). Overall, there were 259 CODIS hits, 69 of which had DNA matches to another sexual assault case. The potential utility of a DNA profile and CODIS hit may vary depending on whether offender was known or unknown to the victim, so we examined these outcomes separately for SAKs associated with stranger- and non-stranger-perpetrated sexual assaults. We also present six case study examples of how DNA testing and CODIS hits helped identify serial sexual assaults in both stranger and non-stranger sexual assault cases. Implications for rape kit testing policies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article observes that many people convicted of misdemeanors are actually innocent, using DNA exonerations and postconviction laboratory test exonerations collected by the National Registry of Exonerations. It determines that innocent defendants plead guilty to avoid pretrial detention, unaware that such pleas make future exoneration all the more difficult.

In 2008, the European Court of Human Rights, in S and Marper v the United Kingdom, ruled that a retention regime that permits the indefinite retention of DNA records of both convicted and non-convicted ("innocent") individuals is disproportionate. The court noted that there was inadequate evidence to justify the retention of DNA records of the innocent. Since the Marper ruling, the laws governing the taking, use, and retention of forensic DNA in England and Wales have changed with the enactment of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA). This Act, put briefly, permits the indefinite retention of DNA profiles of most convicted individuals and temporal retention for some first-time convicted minors and innocent individuals on the National DNA Database (NDNAD). The PoFA regime was implemented in October 2013. This paper examines ten post-implementation reports of the NDNAD Strategy Board (3), the NDNAD Ethics Group (3) and the Office of the Biometrics Commissioner (OBC) (4). Overall, the reports highlight a considerable improvement in the performance of the database, with a current match rate of 63.3%. Further, the new regime has strengthened the genetic privacy protection of UK citizens. The OBC reports detail implementation challenges ranging from technical, legal and procedural issues to sufficient understanding of the requirements of PoFA by police forces. Risks highlighted in these reports include the deletion of some "retainable" profiles, which could potentially lead to future crimes going undetected. A further risk is the illegal retention of some profiles from innocent individuals, which may lead to privacy issues and legal challenges. In conclusion, the PoFA regime appears to be working well, however, critical research is still needed to evaluate its overall efficacy compared to other retention regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forensic science—which includes such techniques as DNA analysis, fingerprint examination, and firearms comparison—plays a crucial role in our criminal justice system by helping to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent. However, our confidence in forensic science conclusions must be tempered by the odds that those conclusions are wrong. What are those odds? Nobody knows the answer because no disinterested researchers have conducted the appropriate studies in any of the forensic science disciplines. This is a serious problem because, without this information, legal decision makers cannot properly assess the validity or probative value of forensic evidence. In this paper, I examine the institutional forces and misunderstandings that are responsible for our ignorance about the accuracy of forensic science conclusions. I then recommend a new type of proficiency testing regimen (Type II proficiency testing) that is designed to measure error rates under appropriate test conditions in the various forensic subfields. Unless and until such studies are undertaken, legal decision makers will continue to fly blind when it comes to assessing the reliability of a reported forensic match. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Note explores the intersections of science and the law in trials involving DNA evidence. The DNA match process is a forensic technique used to identify unknown individuals by the characteristics of their DNA. This procedure is extremely useful in criminal cases where the identity of the perpetrator is in question. While use of DNA match evidence in criminal trials is on the rise, jurors are not equipped to understand complex and manipulable DNA probabilities. Specifically, there exist three impediments to juror comprehension. First, match statistics are incredibly difficult to understand unless jurors have a background in mathematics or statistics. Second, jurors are unaware of inherent biases, including the risk of false positive matches in DNA typing. Third, jurors are at a high risk of being carried away by the significance of a match because DNA has been touted as the gold standard of biometric evidence. Nevertheless, while DNA evidence does have drawbacks, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges agree that it has improved accuracy in criminal trials. Given these barriers, many scholars have grappled with the issue of how to increase juror comprehension, but few have been able to provide practical solutions. In that respect, this Note aims to bridge the gap between a normative and practical answer to the problem. Normatively, the ideal juror in DNA cases ought to be "bionic," meaning that they will have ordinary cognitive powers enhanced by the help of electromechanical DNA typing devices. Because DNA trials are unique in their melding of science and law, the bionic juror represents a new, important standard of rationality. As a way to practically create the bionic juror, this Note proposes a set of cautionary DNA jury instructions to ensure that criminal defendants receive fair trials by rational jurors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More often than not, the source of DNA traces found at a crime scene is not disputed, but the activity or timing of events that resulted in their transfer is. As a consequence, practitioners are increasingly asked to assign a value to DNA evidence given propositions about activities provided by prosecution and defense counsel. Given that the dispute concerns the nature of the activity that took place or the identity of the actor that carried out the activity, several factors will determine how to formulate the propositions. Determining factors are (1) whether defense claims the crime never took place, (2) whether defense claims someone other than the accused (either an unknown individual or a known person) performed the criminal activity, and (3) whether it is claimed and disputed that the suspect performed an alternative, legitimate activity or has a relation to the victim, the object, or the scene of crime that implies a legitimate interaction. Addressing such propositions using Bayesian networks, we demonstrate the effects of the various proposition sets on the evaluation of the evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists' ability to synthesize and reuse long-tail scientific data lags far behind their ability to collect and produce these data. Many Earth Science Cyberinfrastructures enable sharing and publishing their data over the web using metadata standards. While profiling data attributes advances the Linked Data approach, it has become clear that building information-networks among distributed data silos is essential to increase their integration and reusability. In this research, we developed a Long-Tail Information-Network (LTIN) model, which uses a metadata-driven approach to build semantic information-networks among datasets published over the web and aggregate them around environmental events. The model identifies and characterizes the spatial and temporal contextual association links and dependencies among datasets. This paper presents the design and application of the LTIN model, and an evaluation of its performance. The model capabilities were demonstrated by inferring the information-network of a stream discharge located at the downstream end of the Illinois River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muddy the waters: to make a situation more confused and less easy to understand or deal with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of scandal in driving forensic reform and particular two wrongful convictions based on fingerprint analysis and mentions program like the National Institute for Forensic Science originally envisioned by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Understandably enough, most people are under the impression that eyewitness memory is unreliable. For example, research shows that memory is malleable, so much so that people can come to confidently remember traumatic events that never actually happened. In addition, eyewitness misidentifications made with high confidence in a court of law are known to have played a role in more than 70% of the 358 wrongful convictions that have been overturned based on DNA evidence since 1989. However, recent research demonstrates that eyewitness confidence is highly indicative of accuracy on an initial, uncontaminated, properly administered photo lineup. In other words, low confidence indicates that the test result (i.e., the ID) is inconclusive, whereas high confidence indicates that the test result is far more conclusive. Critically, for the DNA exonerees who were misidentified by an eyewitness in a court of law, in every case where their initial confidence can be determined, the eyewitness appropriately expressed low confidence. For any other kind of evidence (e.g., DNA, fingerprints), an inconclusive test result like that would have been the end of it. By contrast, in the case of eyewitness evidence, investigators repeatedly tested (and therefore unwittingly contaminated) memory until a seemingly conclusive high-confidence ID could be presented to the jury. Blaming eyewitness memory for the failure of the criminal justice system to accept the inconclusive nature of the initial (uncontaminated) eyewitness evidence seems misguided. In addition to exonerating the innocent defendants who were wrongfully convicted, the time has come to exonerate eyewitness memory too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent rise of the Innocence Movement, many traditional police tools for evaluating forensic evidence have been called into question. Increasingly, science has proven that certain outdated forensic analyses are unreliable or invalid, shedding light on how these faulty analyses have contributed to numerous unjust convictions of innocent people. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology, a subset of forensic analysis, has performed the counterpoint to this trend by exonerating many wrongfully convicted individuals. Access to DNA testing, however, is inconsistent from state to state. Massachusetts's new 278A motion is a strong model for the correct implementation of a statute providing post-conviction access to DNA testing. States such as Pennsylvania, which has a plethora of barriers to post-conviction relief through DNA testing, should look to Massachusetts's 278A statute as an example on which to base updated post-conviction statutes in order to provide the necessary justice to those who have been wrongfully convicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law enforcement has gradually amassed a sizable DNA database that holds considerable promise for solving cold cases and identifying suspects. The Supreme Court has blessed this effort, allowing investigators to include profiles of arrestees as well as convicted persons in the database. At present, though, law enforcement has a near monopoly on use of the DNA database, leaving defendants at the whim of the law enforcement officials who control access to this tool. Legal scholars have alternatively praised and decried the database, but none has examined its prospects for proving defendants' innocence post-conviction. This Article fills that void by identifying a limited due process right to defense-initiated DNA database searches. The Article argues that the database is a powerful truth-promoting tool that should be available to law enforcement and defendants alike. Because legislators have failed to promote the search for actual offenders through statutory rights of access, this Article presents the constitutional authority for defense-initiated searches to vindicate the rights of innocent defendant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the case law and legislations meant for DNA collection from juveniles. Topics discussed include importance of juvenile DNA collection in neuroscientific and psychosocial research, control of juvenile DNA collection within the criminal justice system, and the importance of DNA collection in DNA profiling for generation evidences for crime investigation.

The article discusses the British Court of Appeal Criminal Division case Transfer and Persistence R v Tsekiri related to DNA profiling. It states that profile belonging to the major contributor was consistent with that taken from the appellant, and mentions that the case highlighted a growing problem for DNA profiling experts related to DNA profiling techniques. It notes that the court failed to address the problem of DNA transfer.

In Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1958 (2013), the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of routine collection and storage of DNA samples and profiles from arrestees. In doing so, it stepped outside the usual framework that treats warrantless searches as per se unconstitutional unless they fall within specified exceptions to the warrant and probable cause requirements. Instead, the Court balanced various individual and state interests. Yet, as regards the state interests, the Court confined this direct balancing analysis to the perceived value of using DNA to inform certain pretrial decisions. Oddly, it avoided relying directly on DNA's more obvious value in generating investigative leads in unsolved crimes. This Article suggests that this contrived analysis resulted from the structure of existing Fourth Amendment case law (and perhaps a desire to avoid intimating that a more egalitarian and extensive DNA database system also would be constitutional). It demonstrates that the opinion does not support a "no lines" system of ad hoc judgments about the reasonableness of every search using the totality of the circumstances. Recognizing that the existing framework of categorical exceptions to the warrant requirement diverges from an older "warrant preference" rule that demands a warrant whenever feasible, the Article shows that King leaves the current per se framework largely intact. Nevertheless, this Article questions the resort to direct balancing. It presents a more coherent doctrinal framework for scrutinizing not just DNA profiling, but all forms of biometric data collection and analysis. In this regard, it notes that the dissenting King opinion overstates the differences between fingerprinting and DNA profiling as currently practiced. Finally, it suggests that the cramped reasoning in both opinions limits the implications of the case for more aggressive DNA database laws--ones that cover more crimes, more people, more loci, and more methods for acquiring DNA samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on rape and sexual assault issues as well as laws regulating them in the U.S. Topics discussed include statistics on the frequency of sexual assault cases in the U.S, criminal prosecution of rape through pre-trial issues including DNA testing, interpretation of rape shield laws and rape survivor privacy, and the U.S Supreme Court's decision in case Maryland v. King that involved analysis of a cheek swab of the arrestee's DNA and probable cause under Fourth Amendment .

The article focuses on the case Maryland v. King, where the U.S. Supreme Court held that DNA testing of pre-trial arrestees, a legitimate police booking procedure was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Topics discussed include the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion in the case and certiorari granted by the U.S. Supreme Court. It also mentions the Maryland DNA Act and case Katz v. United States that involved wiretapping issues.

Individualization, the claim to be able to reduce the potential donor pool of a forensic trace to a single source, has long been criticized. This criticism was echoed by a 2009 U.S. National Research Council report, which called such claims unsupportable for any discipline save nuclear DNA profiling. This statement demanded a response from those disciplines, such as fingerprint analysis, that have historically designated ‘individualization’ one of their approved testimonial conclusions. This article analyses three serial responses to this challenge by the U.S fingerprint profession. These responses posited new terms for testimonial reports or modified the definition of individualization. The article argues that these reforms have yet to ‘fix’ individualization and that all three reforms suffered semantic and conceptual difficulties. The article concludes by suggesting that these difficulties may be traced to the insistence on retaining, and somehow justifying, the term and concept ‘individualization’, instead of developing new terms and concepts from a defensible reasoning process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on judicial errors such as prosecutor and defense attorney fallacies that arise in cases addressing forensic science evidence along with U.S judge Richard Posner's opinion in court cases that addressed forensic science evidence. It discusses court cases involving fingerprint evidence error including United States v. Herrera, United States v. Ford and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. It describes the concept of error probability.

An essay on the regulatory scheme for DNA profiling and crime laboratories in the U.S., is presented. It informs the recommendations from the 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) regarding the DNA analysis and the development of forensic science. It reports that the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors developed the laboratory accreditation program for guidance on accreditation requirements of the Laboratory Accreditation Board.

In Maryland v. King, the United States Supreme Court held that mandatory collection of DNA, pursuant to the Maryland DNA Collection Act or other similar state acts, from an individual arrested for a serious crime does not violate the Fourth Amendment. The Court concluded that taking and analyzing a cheek swab is similar to fingerprinting and photographing, and it is a legitimate booking procedure for police officers that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The Court found that the governmental interest of safely and accurately identifying individuals who are brought into custody outweighs the arrestee's privacy interests. Therefore, the Court held that the Court of Appeals of Maryland erred by reversing King's rape conviction under the Act. This case has important implications for understanding Fourth Amendment protections and the relationship between an individual's right to privacy and the methods which law enforcement may use to apprehend criminals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal aspects of DNA databases and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as of December 2013, focusing on a comparison of different types of expungement processes in various states in America. Privacy rights and efforts to have the DNA profile evidence of arrestees expunged from DNA databases are mentioned. DNA collection practices in the U.S. and Great Britain are examined, along with the European Court of Human Rights and crime prevention initiatives.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2013 case Maryland v. King which deals with the Fourth Amendment to the nation's Constitution, DNA collections laws, and judicial responses to forensic DNA typing. According to the article, criminal suspect Alonzo King's DNA was analyzed in conjunction with a state law in Maryland. The author argues that the court's ruling in the King case will impact the legal aspects of the testing of an arrestee's DNA.

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses an amicus brief filed in the U.S Supreme Court in the case of Maryland v. King that analyzed Maryland's DNA collection practices and statute applied to people arrested for serious crimes under the Fourth Amendment.

The article focuses on the U.S Supreme Court's ruling in case Maryland v. King, in which Maryland's arrestee DNA collection legislation was challenged on violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against searches and seizures. It discusses the European Court of Human Rights' decision regarding the violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the citizen's privacy rights by the statutes that expanded collection and retention of arrestee DNA samples in Great Britain.

The conducted research aims at critically examining the provisions of the Prüm Treaty, and therefore the proposal for the adoption of new provisions that would contribute to the improvement of the legislation in the field and increase the police and judicial cooperation. This paper is a continuation of previous research on topics related to judicial cooperation in criminal matters in the European Union. The conclusions and findings highlight the utility of the European legislative act in this area and the need to supplement it with new provisions in order to broaden the jurisdiction of officials of another State on the territory of the host State in joint actions, in order to prevent and combat the cross-border criminality, particularly terrorism. The paper can be helpful to both theoreticians and practitioners, and to all who wish to improve their knowledge in this highly complex domain. The essential contribution of this study refers to the critical examination and the proposals for supplementing and amending the European and internal legislation in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many epistemological terms, such as investigation, inquiry, argument, evidence, and fact were established in law well before being associated with science. However, while legal proof remained qualified by standards of ‘moral certainty’, scientific proof attained a reputation for objectivity. Although most forms of legal evidence (including expert evidence) continue to be treated as fallible ‘opinions’ rather than objective ‘facts’, forensic DNA evidence increasingly is being granted an exceptional factual status. It did not always enjoy such status. Two decades ago, the scientific status of forensic DNA evidence was challenged in the scientific literature and in courts of law, but by the late 1990s it was being granted exceptional legal status. This paper reviews the ascendancy of DNA profiling, and argues that its widely-heralded objective status is bound up with systems of administrative accountability. The ‘administrative objectivity’ of DNA evidence rests upon observable and reportable bureaucratic rules, records, recording devices, protocols, and architectural arrangements. By highlighting administrative sources of objectivity, this paper suggests that DNA evidence remains bound within the context of ordinary organisational and practical routines, and is not a transcendent source of ‘truth’ in the criminal justice system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses issues related to privacy, accuracy, and racial representation inequalities regarding the U.S. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) database to unveil a criminal based on familial association by identifying familial DNA. The House Bill 3361 depicts familial and partial-match searches transparency by focusing on crimes for which searches might be employed. A partial-match DNA search produces results in DNA databases for a person who may or may not have a familial connection.

Pursuant to federal statutes and to laws in all fifty states, the United States government has assembled a database containing the DNA profiles of over eleven million citizens. Without judicial authorization, the government searches each of these profiles one-hundred thousand times every day, seeking to link database subjects to crimes they are not suspected of committing. Yet, courts and scholars that have addressed DNA databasing have focused their attention almost exclusively on the constitutionality of the government's seizure of the biological samples from which the profiles are generated. This Note fills a gap in the scholarship by examining the Fourth Amendment problems that arise when the government searches its vast DNA database. This Note argues that each attempt to match two DNA profiles constitutes a Fourth Amendment search because each attempted match infringes upon database subjects' expectations of privacy in their biological relationships and physical movements. The Note further argues that database searches are unreasonable as they are currently conducted, and it suggests an adaptation of computer-search procedures to remedy the constitutional deficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miscarriages of justice and reports from Australia and overseas indicate that some lawyers lack knowledge of problems associated with DNA evidence. Many lack understanding of the weaknesses in this evidence and how to uncover and deal with them in criminal cases. This article provides an overview of research and reports that have considered lawyers' role in dealing with DNA evidence. It then introduces a qualitative research project into how lawyers in two Australian jurisdictions deal with DNA evidence in criminal cases. It presents a number of preliminary, but critical, findings identified in interviews with legal practitioners in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Victoria about their management of DNA evidence. In considering these findings, the article suggests that lacunae in practitioner knowledge and major difficulties lawyers face in dealing with DNA evidence may be attributable, in part at least, to systemic barriers to their gaining greater understanding of DNA evidence. Based on the preliminary findings and its literature review, the article points to future issues to be investigated by the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the application of forensic DNA profiling and its law in South Africa. It provides information on the importance of DNA evidence and its validity in court. It outlines its interaction between science and the country's law. It mentions that the analyses and profiles of DNA are not properly understood by the legal society and the perception of its evidence raises potential problems in both methodology and interpretation. It also points out the significance of collecting biological evidence from a crime scene towards its integrity.

The article discusses the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the ethical and public policy issues related to workplace genetic profiling and institutional security. GINA precludes employers from requesting DNA from potential employees. It provides employees protection from discrimination as well as access to and disclosure of personal genetic information. The author proposes turning background criminal checks over to law enforcement agencies which allow them to collect the DNA from prospective employee.

The article discusses the application of DNA fingerprinting as forensic techniques to help in the development of a national DNA database in Great Britain. It presents two court case related to serious offenses by DNA profiles, which include the 11-year old applicant S. charged with attempted robbery, and applicant Marper, charged with harassment. It notes the significance of the decision from the court cases with respect to the general jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. It refers to the decision of the Grand Chamber, saying that the government must release a legislative response which discusses the uncertainty of balancing privacy and fair trail rights.

This paper examines a number of social, ethical and cultural issues related to the application of biotechnology. The focus of the paper relies on two different cases of governing biotechnology in Portugal, referring to donation of biological material: the act of donation of eggs and sperm; and volunteers for donation of DNA material for the forensic national DNA database. We analyze the discourses on donation of biological material framing them in rhetorical devices of gift, altruism, informed consent and social responsibility. This comes blended with still unclear and emergent regulation and policies of access, retention, preservation and governing of biological material and of donors' identification. The risks are mitigated by narratives of science and technology as social progress and providers of public good and health benefits, as well as by underlining the individual responsibility in this domain and by reinforcing the rhetoric of gene quality, based on socio-cultural and bio-genetic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that the adoption and integration of new technologies in professional environments and daily lives depend less on their objective characteristics and "real" performance than on representations and hopes built into those technologies. This paper will focus on DNA technology and the meanings and expectations invested into it by actors who participated in the debate surrounding two bills on DNA identification in Canada. Through this process, we will uncover the symbolic conditions that allowed for the introduction of the National DNA Databank as a crime-fighting tool: first, the minimization of the power of the substance and the idealization of the DNA databank potentialities; second, the scientification and professionalization of the police through DNA; and third, the reconciliation of Canada's two identities, that of the criminal justice innovator and human rights defender. Those are some of the key symbolic elements that made the creation and expansion of the DNA databank possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issue on the injustice brought by DNA testing despite its distinctive opportunity to clear and free innocent individuals who have been convicted for crimes in Utah. It states that a law was passed in 2008 by the Utah Legislature entitled "Exoneration and Innocence Assistance," which was introduced by Representative David Litvack and lobbied by former law student Heather Harris on the grounds that most people that were wrongly convicted were released with no financial support. It cites that despite it is good to pass laws and create bills for the benefit of the unlawfully convicted, it resulted to miscalculated consequences, wherein the government provides compensation to individuals who were not innocent.

Analyzes the retention of offender DNA samples necessary to ensure and monitor quality of forensic DNA efforts. Background on the establishment of state and national DNA databases; Retention of offender DNA samples; Information on the limited disclosure requirements of the DNA Identification Act.

This annotated bibliography is presented as a guide for attorneys, librarians, students, and the general public interested in postconviction DNA evidence. Part 1 presents a brief introduction to the history and use of postconviction DNA evidence. Part 11 includes articles about individuals exonerated through the use of postconviction DNA evidence. Part III presents articles focusing on postconviction DNA evidence in various states. Part IV contains articles about the federal Innocence Protection Act. Part V includes articles about some Innocence Projects in the United States. Part VI includes articles covering various aspects of postconviction DNA evidence. Part VII lists books and chapters of hooks on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]