Experts Fear Use of Weaker DNA Evidence in Court
July 2012
Cleveland Barrett had been imprisoned for more than a year for the predatory criminal sexual assault of a 9 year-old-girl. At the time of his original sentencing, the prosecutors presented the jury with the case testimony from the alleged victim plus the kind of evidence that long has won convictions with its scientific certainty: DNA. William Thompson, Professor in Criminology, Law and Society states: “Juries are conditioned to think DNA is incredibly powerful and dispositive. But these cases are very different. Juries can give this kind of evidence too much weight.”
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