Authorities had accused a local young man named Rudy Guede with sexually assaulting and killing Kercher. Hampikian's lab also tested the DNA of four employees from a local TV news station; all four had at least two alleles in common with the crime scene, like Robinson. As a result the case was sent to the English Court of Appeal and Sean Hodgson was released in 2009. In court both brothers protested their innocence claiming that they confessed under duress. The victim had identified a man named Tyrone White as one of her attackers. She identified a photograph of Steven Avery as her attacker and later gave a positive identification at trial. He has since refused to acknowledge the clear results of the DNA evidence. A few weeks later a police officer came across the 18 year old Kirk Odom and, thinking he looked similar to the sketch of the suspect arranged for the victim to be shown a photograph. Unknown to Michael Phillips his case was on the list for review by the Dallas Conviction Integrity Unit which works to review potential claims of wrongful conviction. At times, DNA evidence has been misused or misunderstood, leading to miscarriages of justice. Sometimes people give a false confession, usually as a result of over pressured questioning techniques by the police involved. Michael Phillips was arrested by armed police in a dawn raid on his property and taken from bed straight to the police station where the victim identified him in a line up. 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Investigators can even collect “touch DNA” from fingerprints on, say, a glass or a doorknob. Sean Hodgson’s blood type matched blood found at the scene and he initially confessed to the murder although he retracted his confession during his trial. It is also not uncommon for too much weight to be given to the evidence of informers many of whom are not disinterested parties as they are offered an inducement such as a sentence reduction if they provide evidence to the prosecutors. One of them, a 26-year-old white female, had three. The men’s attorney was later disbarred for fraud in another case and admitted that he was too stressed, during the original trial, to defend the men properly. Sutton’s case was taken up by Robert Wicoff, a defense attorney in Houston, who persuaded a Texas judge to have the DNA evidence reprocessed by a private testing facility. He had done research on the Y chromosome in Australia and was teaching at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, in 1993 when an associate of famed criminologist Henry Lee asked him whether science could determine the sex of a person based on traces of saliva left at a crime scene. In 1985 the victim admitted to having lied about the rape. DNA evidence on its own may not be sufficient to establish the guilt of the accused, it has to be weighed against all evidence presented before the court. In 16 cases, pieces of evidence were returned to the wrong rape kit, hindering 19 investigations. Like the Italians, Hampikian’s group looked for DNA at levels below the FBI-recommended minimum. His request was only granted in 2012 at which point the DNA evidence was examined and he was declared innocent. Thanks for reading, please support our sponsors. Michael Phillips maintained his innocence until offered a reduction in sentence to 12 years through a plea bargain (he was potentially looking at a 99 year sentence). It is also surprisingly common for witnesses to a crime to make a misidentification. The main reasons for wrongful conviction are strikingly similar in many cases. They said Tapp held Dodge's arms down while one or two other men assaulted and killed her. Some were even at risk of execution for those crimes. In 1995, on the expiry of the statute of limitations, a convicted sex offender, Jerry Johnson wrote to police to confess the crime but these letters were not acknowledged by the police or prosecutor’s office. With mixtures, they’re looking at bunches of peaks, with no indication of which pairs go together, or which source they came from—aside from those of the known victim. Even if police can't match DNA from a crime scene to FBI's national DNA database, loosening their search criteria may lead to a so-called partial match—possibly a relative of the perpetrator, which could provide an investigative lead. It is often said that DNA was used first to convict Colin Pitchfork of the murder of two school girls in the 1980’s. So why are so many innocent people judged to be guilty of crimes they did not commit? Perhaps it might have been better for all concerned if he had never been released in the first place. She claimed to recognize her attacker as someone that she had seen around the motel. And although plenty of Knox’s DNA was on the knife handle (she had used it in cooking), the amount of DNA from Kercher on the blade was vanishingly small—less than half the amount the FBI considered valid for testing. Timothy Cole became a suspect when he spoke with a police officer on campus and was subsequently identified in a photograph and then in a lineup. One man, a Mississippi resident with no criminal record, matched at 34 of the 35 locations. He’s had losses as well. In Tapp’s case, Hampikian has pushed for the use of a new, controversial DNA technique that he believes may yet identify the real killer and exonerate Tapp. In other instances, such as the notorious Amanda Knox conviction in Italy, he has shown how DNA evidence was false or misconstrued. Other than her confession and the fact that she was working in the local area at the time of the incident there was nothing to link her to the murder. Several other rapes had occurred at around the same time. Nevertheless, the Italian court found Knox and Sollecito guilty. “He knows his stuff and is a great witness. White confessed; as part of a plea bargain he implicated Robinson, against whom he had a grudge. He was charged with the 1990 rape of a 16 year old girl at a motel. Cole died in prison in 1999 having maintained his innocence from the first to the last. Two of those men pleaded guilty to the crime in 1997. There he was arrested for the 1997 murder of a businesswoman/prostitute Yasuko Wantabe who was strangled to death in a brutal attack that attracted prurient headlines across Japan, mostly related to the lifestyle choices of the poor victim. During the third trial, the defense presented evidence that the initial blood splatter expert had falsified his credentials and had no history of working with blood splatters. I don't think people are evil, but once they are convinced of a story, they protect it. But he puts on a brave phone voice for him as he explains the options. Later, he was so captivated by the story of Calvin Johnson, who was exonerated by DNA in 1999 after spending 16 years in prison for rape, that he helped Johnson write an autobiography, Exit to Freedom. In order to mount an appeal, Tapp’s lawyers must produce evidence that was not available at the time of the trial. Last spring, Thomas got court permission to try another avenue: have a laboratory do “touch DNA” testing of swabs that had been taken from Dodge's hands. Tyrone White has served his reduced sentence and walked free. “There has been a hundred years of precedence, not a hundred years of data,” says Ralph Haber, a consultant who has studied the reliability of forensic evidence. Cases where the courts got it wrong. The prosecution maintained that the 11-year-old girl had obtained the foreign semen through another sexual encounter prior, that was completely consensual. Why were so many people wrongly convicted and what does that say about the justice system in the US and others worldwide where people can be sent away from society for crimes they did not commit? Testing these kits might have yielded DNA evidence that could have advanced investigations. The student was taken to a field where she was subjected to a prolonged rape before being returned to town. But Italian prosecutors also charged Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito with murder. The Innocence Project came across Deskovic’s case in 2006, and conducted further testing with newer technology on the semen in the rape kit. A man with Parkinson’s disease who was unable to walk more than a few feet without assistance was convicted of a burglary based on a partial DNA profile match. Dennis Williams and Willie Rainge were re-tried and found guilty once again and Verneal Jimerson was tried for the crime when Paula Grey reverted to her original testimony to gain release from prison. While DNA evidence has been a unique tool of justice in uncovering so many wrongful convictions, it can also result in wrongful convictions. A mere 25 or 30 cells will sometimes suffice. Thanks to a series of advances—including the polymerase chain reaction, which can multiply tiny amounts of DNA—it’s now possible to detect DNA at levels hundreds or even thousands of times lower than when DNA fingerprinting was developed in the 1980s. In 2009 the evidence in his case was re-examined – his convictions were vacated. In 1979 Cathy Woods, who suffered mental health problems, had confessed to the 1976 murder of Michelle Mitchell whose body was found with her hands tied and throat slit. It has exonerated scores of people convicted based on more flawed disciplines like hair or bite-mark analysis. They're not wrong: DNA is the most accurate forensic science we have. The man, who had submitted a cheek swab at the urging of his Mormon pastor, was too old to fit the killer’s profile. 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