Tag: DNA
Small samples of DNA are often used to clear up cold cases. Police recently revealed a discarded cigarette butt helped them charge a Texas man over the murder of a 50-year-old woman on Mother’s Day 2016. Byron Lloyd Collins, 29, was recently picked up by authorities at the same complex in Baytown where Natalia Shal…
Bite mark evidence as a forensic science technique used at crime scenes has been under fire for some time. Now a new paper has urged law enforcement agencies to discontinue its use. The paper in Journal of Law and the Biosciences outlines the legal basis for the rise of the bite-mark identification technique and its…
Thousands of case files are set to be reopened in Texas after a change in scientific standards for DNA evaluation raised questions about the convictions of numerous defendants. DNA evidence has been seen as a highly reliable indicator of guilt or innocence in criminal cases for decades. But a major re-evaluation in the probabilities involved…
DNA evidence has been routinely used in criminal trials since the 1990s and is seen as an extremely reliable way of linking a suspect to a crime. However, an investigation currently underway in Travis and Williamson counties in Texas has raised concerns about the way examiners have been analyzing DNA evidence in hundreds of criminal…