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61 Miss. L.J. 423 (1991)
DNA Fingerprinting: Overview of the Impact of the Genetic Witness on the American System of Criminal Justice

handle is hein.journals/mislj61 and id is 439 raw text is: DNA FINGERPRINTING: OVERVIEW OF THE IMPACT OF THE GENETIC WITNESS ON THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE INTRODUCTION Upon returning to her home, Miss Hill entered her darkened bed- room, only to be overcome from behind by a person who immediately blindfolded, then subsequently raped her. She never saw the man's face. As counsel for the defendant accused of the rape, you are faced with three pieces of evidence. The first two are circumstantial: Less than fifteen minutes after the attack, your client was involved in an automobile accident within two blocks of the victim's home; also, one of the victim's neighbors believes that he saw your client drive slowly past the victim's home several times earlier that day, in the same type and color of car wrecked by your client on the evening of the attack. The third bit of evidence is much more overwhelming. An expert for the prosecution testified that a DNA fingerprint' obtained from a se- men stain on the victim's bedsheet matched a DNA sample obtained from a blood sample of the defendant. The expert testifies further that the chances of another person having this same DNA fingerprint are approximately one in 30 million; in other words, the expert is virtually certain that the defendant was the attacker. As defense counsel, you feel from the faces of the jurors that they made up their minds to re- turn a verdict of guilty as soon as they heard such an astronomical figure. The use of DNA testing in cases involving fact patterns such as this has skyrocketed in recent years. Since first being introduced in a criminal case in 1986, DNA tests have been admitted into evidence in at least 185 criminal cases in thirty-eight states and the U.S. military.' DNA tests have also been performed in at least 2,000 criminal investi- Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the molecular genetic code in each living organism which determines that organism's unique characteristics. Although the term finger- print is a misnomer when used in the DNA context, its use is universally accepted as a lay description of the process of matching DNA samples. Throughout this comment, the terms DNA fingerprinting, DNA profiling, and DNA typing are used interchangeably. ' OTA Report Brief, Genetic Witness: Forensic Uses of DNA Tests, Office of Tech- nological Assessment (July 1990).

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