Forensic DNA
Forensic use of DNA by police and other agencies with ties to the legal system has become increasingly common in the past 30 years. DNA evidence has become in many ways the gold standard of evidence, particulary in cases of murder and sexual assault. The hype around DNA and forensic technology more broadly have led to a widespread expectation that criminal cases will always involve significant forensic evidence and, moreover, that when scientific evidence is presented, it represents the incontrovertible truth.
These assumptions are especially problematic in the face of often systematic (and systemic) misuses and misinterpretations of DNA evidence, like those uncovered by independent experts asked to investigate the Houston Police Department Crime Laboratory in the early 2000s. Failures in processing and interpreting DNA results, which are often complex and potentially confusing, can have devastating consequences in a court of law.
When presented with supposedly air-tight DNA evidence, juries may be much more likely to convict, even in the face of otherwise exculpatory evidence. These are the sorts of errors that have resulted in cases like that of Josiah Sutton, who was convicted of rape when he was 16 years old and spent four years in prison in the United States before questions around the Houston Crime Lab’s practices–and his mother’s tireless advocacy–led to a reexamination of evidence that saw his conviction overturned.
Forensics in general has been under scrutiny in recent years, with serious questions arising about the accuracy of fingerprinting, especially from partial prints, bite-mark analysis, microscopic-hair-comparison, and ballistics. Questions around the accuracy of DNA evidence, and about our ability to interpret that evidence even when we have it, are part of a larger reckoning in a field that has proven far less reliable than TV crime dramas would have us believe.
Concerns about police use of DNA evidence have arisen in other contexts, too. For example, law enforcement agencies like the police have requested and sometimes received access to genetic databases held by companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA. High profile cases, like the arrest and conviction of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., formerly known as the Golden State Killer, have served to bolster public impressions of the power of DNA evidence, but also raise serious questions about privacy, and what exactly consumers can expect when submitting their DNA to companies for genealogical testing.
Police searches are often incompatible with companies’ privacy policies, and it is clear that the potential consequences of DNA sequencing both for consumers and their extended families can be very serious indeed. While in some cases, this sort of testing may end in the solution of a cold case like that of the Golden State Killer, the consequences for people like Josiah Sutton and others wrongly convicted based on DNA evidence rightly give us pause. As Matthew Shaer points out in his 2016 article for the Atlantic, the majority of those wrongly convicted are Black, like Sutton–it is no surprise that bogus evidence contributes to the disproportionate persecution of Black people by the American legal system, and it is disturbing to consider that phony forensic science may be yet another tool to further already-endemic racial oppression.
The implications of DNA data storage are wide ranging and should be understood through the nuanced historical, political, infrastructural and social context of DNA research and technology. Each of the modules on this site offer a unique way for you to conceptualize and question genomic media.