girlhasnoname
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So agree, GG is to LE today what DNA was back in the mid 90's and 2000. It will only improve over time as all LE, from the top down, become more educated.I have no clue about the legal questions. But I do not think they were looking for BK DNA in MK's trash. Instead, they figured that the match they had from Othram showed it was this branch of the Kohberger family, whose genealogy is actually mostly online. They knew BK wasn't living there at the time and wasn't throwing anything in the trash (yet). But since the match must have been 50%, they knew they'd filled their BINGO card and that MK was the father of the POI.
Since MK only had one son (and I've seen internet conspiracy theories about some unknown twin of BK who is managing to go through life still attached closely to BK - but is invisible to society?) it was clear who the POI was. I do believe they used that fact in the Idaho PCA. Not sure.
So the Court decided to issue an arrest warrant for this POI, which included gathering his own, actual DNA. Which of course matched the STR results from ISL (which were the basis of the Othram study) 100%. They had their guy.
And I do not expect that in the long run, such matches and such a powerful forensic tool will be eliminated by our court system. It might take years of arguing and the passage of new laws, but DNA analysis is here to stay and is only going to get more potent (especially in regard to finding tiny amounts of it and being able to analyze it - using SNP's).
Also, we as laymen who might be called to serve on a jury will become more educated on it as a whole, maybe not the minutia, but the general concept and knowledge. Genetic genealogy is here to stay IMO.
MOO