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How Reliable Is DNA In Identifying Suspects?

By standdown

That's the title of a must-read article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times reported by Jason Feich and Maura Dolan.  LINKState crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people. The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white. In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches -- each seeming to defy impossible odds. As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI's DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation's genetic databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on July 22, 2008 (boomark / email).