I was talking to few friends the other day and conversation veered off from finger prints to DNA blueprints. One of my friends said that DNA blueprint proof is not admissible as evidence in the court of law. Is that true? My understanding is that DNA blueprint is even more exact “science” than fingerprinting then why it’s not admissible as evidence?
DNA is absolutely admissible in court. Did your friend not see the OJ Simpson trial? DNA was something of an issue there.
New York is actually now trying to use DNA to indict unidentified suspects.
DNA Evidence is certainly admissible in the UK.
A senior police office now wants a national database of everyones DNA to aid crime detection. (if I can find the name I will CITE it later)
I don’t know anything about this issue, but what’s happening in this article?
It seems to me that while it is admissible the extent to which is relied upon as evidence is very ambiguous. It’s probably given more weight in criminal trials, I guess.
That article says nothing about the admissability of DNA evidence. It is about court decisions regarding child support being paid by men who have proven they are not biological fathers to the children they are supporting. Family law is strange and varies wildly from state to state, anyway. In a criminal case, DNA is as admissable as any other kind of forensic evidence.
The issue in the article is about a man who marries a woman who has told him that she is pregnant with his child. Several years later they get divorced. At that point, they did a DNA test and found that he was not the father. In some states, he would have to pay child support anyway. In those states, the point is that the man married the woman voluntarily and acted as the child’s father for some years. The state is thus asserting that acting as the child’s father (i.e., marrying the woman and living with her and the child) is as important as the results of a DNA test.
Cheers, sorry for the hijack.