Dna and Trial Phases

For the accused, DNA can play a vital role in determining whether one walks out the court room a free citizen or if they will spend a substantial amount of time behind bars as a guilty inmate. Just how far does authority go in the courtroom? Do attorneys have all of the authority when it comes to proving a case? Alternatively, does DNA speak for itself? Regardless of the limited use, DNA evidence has proven to be far more reliable than eyewitness testimony in criminal cases. One may ask what are the positive attributes and effects that DNA evidence has in the pretrial stage. According to Imwinkelried, One effect of DNA technology at the pre-trial phase has been the establishment of DNA databases. In addition to the national Convicted Offender Database Information System (CODIS) maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, every state has its own database (Lazer, 2004). In fact, (CODIS) has roughly over hundreds of thousand DNA samples from suspects nation wide. What all this means is that it is easier to conclude if a suspect is guilty or not if his/her DNA is a hit or matched in the system. This system helps to solve cold cases/ unsolved crimes and to rid our community from perpetrators. For example: In December 1998, a 21-year-old pediatric nursing student was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered in Broward County, Florida. Three months later a DNA sample from Lucious Boyd was matched to semen found on the victim’s body. Boyd was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering the nursing student and sentenced to death in June 2002 (Hart, 2003).

The use of post-conviction DNA testing has proven to be beneficial for exonerating wrongfully convicted defendants. If I may further explain, for inmates who claim to be innocent of a crime they were convicted for may have their case re-opened and tried again with the help of DNA testing from the crime scene. In many post- convictions, DNA testing helped to free the falsely accused. For example, A Maryland...