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MD: Defendant abandoned McDonald's cup from which DNA was collected

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant abandoned a cup from which his DNA was collected and used to connect him to a rape. He threw it away for others to collect. Williamson v. State, 2010 Md. LEXIS 175 (April 22, 2010): The writers for the NBC television series Law & Order Special Victims Unit would be hard pressed to author an episode full of more issues involving DNA than found in this case in which the Anne Arundel County police, in 2006, matched DNA of the Appellant, Kelroy Williamson, retrieved from his discarded McDonald's cup to the DNA found in two separate rape victims' forensic medical examinations in 1994 and 2002. Williamson was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County in 2007 on charges of rape and related offenses for the 2002 crime, and he appealed to the Court of Special Appeals, arguing that his arrest warrant for the 2002 rape was based on a statement of probable cause predicated upon the illegal testing of the DNA from the discarded cup and the 1994 forensic examination, as well as the uploading of his DNA profile into a local database and search of that database for a profile match...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on April 26, 2010 (boomark / email).