Eideard

The DNA of most innocent people arrested in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will not be kept for more than six years, the Home Office has said…

The move comes after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that the National DNA Database was illegal…

Ministers defend this as a proportionate tactic that protects the public, rather than a principled but simplistic stand for privacy. The problem is that there is a lack of data on how many crimes have been cracked thanks to retaining DNA from innocent people…

That leaves critics saying anyone in this category has been judged “not guilty – yet”. If the plan gets through before the general election, it will be challenged, testing ministers’ claims to have balanced privacy with a duty to protect the public.

Wasn’t there once a standard of constitutional rights being based upon principles rather than expedient policies enacted by a government run by fear-filled cowards?

How can people be judged temporarily innocent?

Gotcha!

A blood-swollen leech found at a crime scene eight years ago has led Australian police to an armed robber.

The leech dropped off Peter Cannon as he and an accomplice tied a 71-year-old woman to a chair in her remote home in the Tasmanian woods and stole several hundred dollars in cash in September 2001.

Officials extracted blood from the leech that they believed was likely to have come from one of the two suspects. They identified Cannon as that culprit when he was arrested last year on unrelated drug charges and authorities for the first time recorded his DNA profile.

Sally Kelty, a forensic science researcher, said the case could be the first in which investigators had used DNA extracted from a bloodsucker such as a leech or a mosquito to solve a crime…

Detective Inspector Mick Johnston, who was involved in the police investigation, said the leech was the only forensic evidence found at the crime scene. He said he was happy with the guilty plea, especially for the victim, Fay Olson.

“She’s waited a long time for closure to this matter and it’s nice to be able to deliver that,” Johnson told ABC radio.

Parasite catches parasite!

Anthony Caravella’s first day of freedom was a mix of catching up with family members he hasn’t seen in more than a quarter-century, cautiously venturing out into a changed world and taking care of necessities like getting a Social Security card.

His brother, Larry Dunlap, had to tell him that he no longer needs to ask for permission to move from room to room…

“I’m trying not to get too used to this [freedom],” said the convicted rapist and murderer, who was set free Thursday on a judge’s orders. Prosecutors requested his temporary release after a DNA test cast grave doubt on the convictions…

He walked out of the Broward County Jail on Thursday afternoon with no money and no possessions other than the shirt, pants and sneakers that his public defender, Diane Cuddihy, bought for him. He felt self-conscious that he has to rely on his youngest brother for everything and said he wanted to get a job as soon as possible…

There was kindness from strangers — a lawyer donated two prime tickets to a Miami Dolphins game in October and a local man offered Caravella and his brother and sister a day trip to Disney World.

To help him adapt after nearly 26 years behind bars — he was 15 when he was arrested — the Innocence Project of Florida offered a social worker.

The judge released him because DNA evidence made it clear he wasn’t the guilty party. Any bets on whether nor not the courts consider his testimony that the mentally-challenged 15-year-old [then] was beaten to get a confession?

A Georgia man who spent a year in jail for nonpayment of child support — despite the fact he has no children — has been cleared of the debt, his attorney said Tuesday.

Frank Hatley, 50, spent 13 months in jail for being a deadbeat dad before his release last month. In June 2008, a judge ordered him to jail for failing to reimburse the state for public assistance that was paid to support his “son” — a child who DNA tests proved was not fathered by Hatley.

Last week, Cook County Superior Court Judge Dane Perkins signed an order stating, “defendant is no longer responsible for paying any amount of child support.” The order permits the state’s Office of Child Support Services to close its file on Hatley.

“We’re satisfied with the result for Mr. Hatley, but still troubled by the state’s monumental lapse of judgment in this case,” attorney Sarah Geraghty…told CNN…

A DNA test in 2000 proved he wasn’t the father of the child in question.

The argument for keeping Hatley liable for the back payments, according to the attorney who represented him in 2000, was that he signed a consent agreement with the Office of Child Support Services.

Before he learned that the child wasn’t his.

The court agreed that Hatley had to comply with the consent agreement for the period he believed the child was his son, said attorney Latesha Bradley…

Two things still remain to be cleared up for Hatley, Geraghty said — lifting the child-support holds on his driver’s license and his income tax. It remains unclear whether he will be reimbursed for the $6,000 in payments he made since 2000, she said — so far, he has not been.

I hope you don’t think the question of justice will ever mean anything to Georgia jurisprudence. Cynical would be the kindest description of the contempt deserved by the bureaucrats and black-robed brainless thugs in this case.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

It was a scene replayed with alarming frequency in Texas: a 46-year-old man walked out of prison here Friday afternoon after spending 23 years behind bars for a sex crime that the evidence suggests he did not commit.

The man, Ernest Sonnier, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison largely on the strength of the victim’s testimony, even though the forensic evidence gathered from her body and clothes showed that someone with a blood type different from the defendant’s had raped her, lawyers from the Innocence Project in New York said.

“It’s just sloppy science, at best,” said Alba Morales, who represents Mr. Sonnier.

Well, “best” has little or nothing to do with justice in Texas. Especially if you’re Black.

Over the last 18 months, genetic testing of evidence found on the victim’s clothing and at the scene of the attack had yielded no trace of Mr. Sonnier, the Harris County district attorney’s office said. Instead, it has implicated two other men. Both are felons and known associates. One is awaiting trial for a different rape.

In light of the new evidence, Judge Michael McSpadden of Harris County District Court on Friday ordered Mr. Sonnier to be released pending further investigation, a first step toward exoneration, which under Texas law can be granted only by the state’s highest criminal court.

Donna Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said the state was not ready to concede Mr. Sonnier’s innocence, though prosecutors acknowledge that the new DNA tests cast strong doubt on the conviction. “There is a lot more legwork that needs to be done before we draw any conclusions,” Ms. Hawkins said.

Donna Hawkins is another predictable legal hack – guaranteed to reject science and justice equally. The perfect political prosecutor for Texas jurisprudence.

As he stood with his mother and extended family in the scorching sun outside the Harris County Jail, Mr. Sonnier said the justice system had broken down. He had lost two decades of life.

“The evidence was on the table that I wasn’t the guy, and they failed to do justice,” he said. “It’s lost. It’s lost. There is no way to make it up.”

Texas leads the nation in cases in which convicted men have been exonerated through DNA tests. Thirty-eight of the nation’s 241 people cleared since 1989 were convicted here, according to the Innocence Project, a charity dedicated to such cases.

There are Texans who stand up for justice. Who reject the racism that still defines much of law and justice in one of the least repentant of the Confederate States. They are not the majority of the electorate.

Michelle Samaraweera’s sister appeals for help

An unprecedented DNA sweep of residents in 9,000 homes has been launched by detectives in a desperate race to catch a murderer and serial rapist who strikes towards the end of each month.

In a huge operation murder squad detectives have been drafted in from all over London to help complete the canvassing of houses within a 3.4 mile-wide perimeter in Walthamstow, east London.

Senior commanders know it will take at least a month to take a DNA swab from every male matching the description of the attacker and fear another woman will be attacked within days.

The rapist has assaulted at least three women, murdering his last victim and leaving her in a children’s playground.

All men that fit the description of the attacker are being asked to voluntarily give a mouth swab. If they refuse they face further investigation.

Detective Superintendent Vic Rae, from the Homicide and Serious Crime command, who is leading the hunt, said: “This guy has attacked three women in three months and we have got to do everything within our powers to apprehend him before he strikes again. Our concern is that he will strike again before the end of the month.”

RTFA. Stark, scary, provoking a massive police action throughout this community.

But, Issue Number 1 remains the task of catching this thug.

In an age of advanced forensic science, the first step toward ending Kenneth Reed’s prolonged series of legal appeals should be simple and quick: a DNA test, for which he has offered to pay, on evidence from the 1991 rape of which he was convicted.

Louisiana, where Mr. Reed is in prison, is one of 46 states that have passed laws to enable inmates like him to get such a test. But in many jurisdictions, prosecutors are using new arguments to get around the intent of those laws, particularly in cases with multiple defendants, when it is not clear how many DNA profiles will be found in a sample.

The laws were enacted after DNA evidence exonerated a first wave of prisoners in the early 1990s, when law enforcement authorities strongly resisted reopening old cases. Continued resistance by prosecutors is causing years of delay and, in some cases, eliminating the chance to try other suspects because the statute of limitations has passed by the time the test is granted.

Mr. Reed has been seeking a DNA test for three years, saying it will prove his innocence. But prosecutors have refused, saying he was identified by witnesses, making his identification by DNA unnecessary.

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Paul House and his mom

A former death row inmate in Tennessee has been cleared of murder, three years after the Supreme Court raised repeated questions about his conviction. State prosecutors asked a judge to drop all charges against Paul House, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in 1986. Special Judge Jon Blackwood accepted the request.

House had been scheduled to be executed next month for the 1985 murder of Carolyn Muncey. He had been on death row for 22 years but was released on bail last year. He has multiple sclerosis and must use a wheelchair…

“Although the issue is closed, we conclude that this is the rare case where — had the jury heard all the conflicting testimony — it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror viewing the record as a whole would lack reasonable doubt,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-3 majority.

House’s appeal was championed by the Innocence Project, affiliated with the Cardozo School of Law in New York.

“In the three years since the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into this case and sent it back to the trial court, substantial additional DNA testing and further investigation have shown that he is innocent,” said Peter Neufeld, the group’s co-director. “Each time a layer of this case was peeled away, it revealed more evidence of Paul House’s innocence.”

Subsequent state-of-the art DNA testing conducted after the conviction showed that semen on the victim belonged to her husband, not House. Blood under her fingernails and cigarette butts discovered near the wooded crime scene also did not match the accused.

But prosecutors maintain that other evidence points to his guilt. Muncey’s family has also continued to believe that House was involved in the crime.

So, golly, I guess we should once again accept opinion and intuition over scientific evidence. Crap.

Anyone giving odds on whether or not the coppers and prosecutors go after someone else?

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, will publish plans this week for the destruction of the DNA profiles of nearly a million innocent people from the police national database. The government’s response follows a ruling by the European court of human rights last year that the practice of retaining the DNA profiles was illegal.

In a retreat from plans to get round the judgment, first reported in the Guardian in February, the new proposals will also include the destruction of all physical samples, such as mouth swabs, hair and blood. They will be published in a consultation paper on forensics.

Smith told the Observer today that there were genuine concerns over the size and scope of the DNA database. “It is crucial that we do everything we can to keep the public safe from crime and bring offenders to justice,” she said. “The DNA database plays a vital role in helping us do that. However, there has to be a balance between the need to protect the public and respecting their rights. Based on risks versus benefits, our view is that we can now destroy all samples.”

Of the 5.1 million people on the database, about 800,000 have no criminal conviction; they may have been arrested and never charged, or taken to court and found not guilty. After the court ruling last December which criticised the “blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the UK regime, Smith ordered the profiles of all young children to be removed immediately, and indicated that time limits would be introduced for those not convicted of any crime.

Civil liberty groups will be anxious to see how long the police are allowed to keep the DNA data before they are required to remove it.

The next step.

Thomas in 1971
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Los Angeles police believe they have caught a serial killer responsible for the rape and murders of up to 30 elderly women in two separate waves of rampages in the 1970s and 1980s.

John Thomas, 72, is being held in the city’s county jail after being linked through DNA samples to five killings. Police suspect him of being the notorious “West Side rapist” who spread terror over many years among lonely older women.

He was arrested last month and charged with the deaths of Ethel Sokoloff, 68, in 1972, and Elizabeth McKeown, 67, four years later. DNA tests have linked him to three other murders, but officers are interested in a further 25 killings that they think he may have perpetrated as well as dozens of rapes and sexual assaults.

“When all is said and done, Mr Thomas stands to be Los Angeles’ most prolific serial killer,” Richard Bengston of the LAPD told the Los Angeles Times.

Even at a time when LA had a reputation for violence, drugs and gangs, the spate of rapes and killings stood out as singularly grim and disturbing. The attacks were focused on the Wilshire area to the west of the city, just south of Hollywood and close to Thomas’s then home. Over a six-year period beginning around 1972 there were up to 19 murders and more than 20 other sexual assaults in the neighbourhood.

A second wave of killings occurred between 1983 and 1989 in Claremont, 30 miles east of downtown LA. The dates and locations coincide with Thomas’s movements. In 1978 he was sent to prison for five years for a single rape, moving after his release to an area adjacent to Claremont.

Most of the victims were single women, often widows, many in their 70s and 80s; one was 92. The attacks happened late at night and appeared to have been meticulously planned. In all cases, the victims were strangled and had a pillow or blanket placed over the face.

The killer preyed upon his victims’ vulnerability. Some were blind, others deaf or only partially able to walk.

Throw away the key.

This guy has a record going back to 1971 – as far as I found online. DNA testing has been around 20 years or so. Please tell me this isn’t the only way a decent police department can catch predators and murderers – by data mining?