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Australian police will re-examine 7,000 crimes solved through DNA evidence after a mistake forced detectives to free a suspect wrongly accused of murder.
Police in the southern city of Melbourne withdrew charges against Russell John Gesah, accused in July of the 1984 murders of a 35-year-old mother and her nine-year-old daughter.
“It’s obviously an embarrassment and we would rather not be in this position,” said Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland…
Police last month said a DNA sample taken from the murder scene, where Margaret Tapp was strangled and her daughter Seana raped and later killed, matched Gesah after comparison with 400,000 other DNA profiles on a national database.
Gesah was arrested and faced court, but a later check found the DNA evidence used against him was taken elsewhere and mistakenly tested with samples from the Tapp murder scene.
Overland said every crime solved by DNA in the state since the testing technology was introduced 20 years ago would now be reviewed to check no other bungles had occurred.
Of course, they could follow the Dallas, Texas, model and simply deny a mistake had ever occurred.
Eideard==congrats for remembering and linking your previous post but the two stand for almost opposite positions.
In this case, dna was wrongly processed but the “chain of custody” problem was resolved before conviction. Indeed a mistake with the dna had been made.
In the Dallas Case (and let me add I dislike everything about Texas and the idiots that are proud to stay there outside of Austin and the Gulf Area) innocent people got set free because years after their conviction BETTER evidence, ie DNA, was found to clear them. No “mistake” was made in the sense that occurred in your current posting.
You know, being anti-authoritarian does not transform word association into analysis.
You live in a police state.
How dare you question your local police department.
bobbo appears to be so hooked on semantics, he missed the point. At least, the point I understood from Eid’s opinion.
There is a qualitative difference between a justice system which finds one mistake and publicly admits the need to re-examine every single case preceding the mistake – and a similar system which has passed through 19 prosecutions which have been overturned and sees no need whatsoever to re-examine any decisions.
But, then, splitting hairs is apparently more fun, eh?
Admitting when you are wrong and saying sorry can do wonders for a relationship, including those between government and citizen.
#3–moss==you also seem to be making the same anti-authoritarian word game confusion.
As I read the linked Dallas Case==THE WHOLE POINT–is that the case was overturned by the Dallas Legal System reviewing new and additional information not available at the time of trial. There was no “mistake” made in the Dallas Case and therefore nothing to review.
Hard to draw more without inventing facts not included in the article? I believe there are 10,000’s if not 1000’s of dna samples sitting in cold storage relating to criminal cases that have not been tested. They were collected before dna testing became widely available just as in the Dallas Case. Who knows how many innocent people are in jail, and how many guilty people are walking free?
I would vote whatever tax dollars are necessary to do all that testing. Its not something the “system” can just order up on its own though. The real world has limits.
Tell me==how am I wrong?
There was probably other evidence that suggested (but did not prove) a connection to the suspect.
If there wasn’t – than how does the mere existence of an individual’s DNA at a crime scene prove that they did it?
I can imagine the interrogation:
Q: Did you do it?
A: No, I wasn’t there!
Q: But we found your DNA at the crime scene – so you’re lying!
This is a reason to suspect guilt, but hardly proof.
How well do they screen the people what do the
lab work on crime scene DNA?
I hope it’s better then government anthrax lab workers.
One shady character could make a TON of
money switching the right samples.
I have to go with #3, moss and #4, sirfelix on this one. While it isn’t just “fine” to make a mistake, they do happen. The acknowledgment of the mistake and the effort to correct it show the difference.
One error has caused a re-evaluation of the entire process. Not so in Dallas.