Fake DNA — Planted Evidence!

So appar­ently with some min­i­mal biol­ogy train­ing, peo­ple can “fake” DNA evi­dence. One would think defense attor­neys around the globe would already be hop­ping up and down, denounc­ing the reli­a­bil­ity of this rel­a­tively “new” dis­ci­pline in forensics.

Quite the con­trary, when asked, the Innocence Project (a group who relies on DNA evi­dence to prove falsely con­victed peo­ple are inno­cent) says they are more con­cerned with crime lab sci­en­tists “plant­ing evi­dence” to get false con­vic­tions. Amazing!

Basically in the same breath, the defense com­mu­nity is say­ing “DNA evi­dence that shows our guy is inno­cent is reli­able, but any evi­dence that shows our guy is guilty is planted evi­dence fab­ri­cated by police scientists”

Original arti­cle posted here:

Please watch the video on the website.

SOUTH BAY (KGO) — Scientists in Israel have announced a dis­cov­ery that could seri­ously impact the United States’ crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. In the jour­nal Forensic Science International they detailed how they’ve been able to fab­ri­cate DNA.

The authors of the study say manip­u­lat­ing a crime scene with false DNA evi­dence is so easy — even a biol­ogy under­grad­u­ate stu­dent could do it. The sci­en­tists say they were able to take saliva and blood sam­ples from one per­son and fab­ri­cate the sam­ples so they con­tain the DNA of another person.

This could chal­lenge an inves­tiga­tive tool the legal sys­tem uses daily, but ABC7’s legal ana­lyst Dean Johnson says he isn’t too wor­ried about the sci­ence end­ing up in the wrong hands.

“In my expe­ri­ence the peo­ple that we arrest for mur­der, rape, rob­bery, child molesta­tion, gen­er­ally don’t have a very good foun­da­tion in mol­e­c­u­lar biol­ogy,” says Johnson.

ABC7 showed the study to Linda Starr, the head of the Innocence Project at Santa Clara University. She says “It’s pretty aston­ish­ing research.”

The Innocence Project often relies on DNA evi­dence to help exon­er­ate peo­ple. Starr also isn’t too con­cerned about crim­i­nals fig­ur­ing this out. What she is wor­ried about is the peo­ple who work in the crime labs.

“Perhaps it’s planted by some­body in law enforce­ment or cre­ated by a foren­sics lab,” says Starr.

The author of the study is also sell­ing a solu­tion to this prob­lem. He founded the com­pany Nucleix — which pro­vides a test that can dis­tin­guish between real and fake DNA. He hopes to sell the test to foren­sic labs.

Johnson admits some attor­neys could pos­si­bly use this as an argu­ment against DNA.

“Those argu­ments, I think, are a real stretch. I don’t think they’ll go very far in court,” says Johnson.

Starr thinks there are big­ger issues to worry about than arti­fi­cial DNA.

“Let’s face it, if a guy wants to plant somebody’s DNA evi­dence some­where, it’s not that hard to go get a cig­a­rette butt or cof­fee cup,” says Starr.

However, Starr says her stu­dents will cer­tainly be encour­aged to think about this when look­ing at a case from every pos­si­ble angle.