Earliest Criminal Case using DNA Evidence?
@Love Never Fails sbm bbm Thx for your post. Not gonna debate about prosecution or defense strategies in ^ trial or the outcomes either. You're right:
OJ case* in which victims were killed in 1994, and trial started in
1994, was a fairly early case using DNA evd, but not the first.
The distinction of first person convicted of murder based on
DNA fingerprinting evidence belongs to
Colin Pitchfork, an Englishman** who raped & murdered two girls, one in 1983, the second in 1986. After his 1987 arrest & 1988 life sentence, imo it's safe to say the DNA testing & analysis for that case was done in
1988 or before. That UK conviction
pre-dated OJ's trial by six years.
"In
1987, genetic fingerprinting was used in a
US criminal court for the first time in the trial of a man accused of unlawful intercourse with a mentally handicapped 14-year-old female who gave birth to a baby."***
______________________________________
* June 1994, Homicides of Simpson & Goldman. (Then presumably, DNA resting & analysis for case). Nov. 1994.......Jury is sworn in.
O. J. Simpson murder case - Wikipedia
** Colin Pitchfork - Wikipedia
Also: HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF FORENSIC DNA TESTING BY: Paul Couenhoven
http://www.sdap.org/downloads/research/criminal/pc15.pdf
*** DNA profiling - Wikipedia.
Refers to: Joseph Wambaugh, The Blooding (New York, New York: A Perigord Press Book, 1989), 316.