Recent content by Chris_Halkides

The primary witness did not know the deceased or the defendant. She was traveling with two small children in a car making a bend in the road. Her initial description of them was not a close match, nor was her initial estimate of her time.

Although it can be difficult to establish a deterioration rate, my recollection is that DNA from blood is thought not to be particularly long lived. Perhaps there are nucleases which damage the DNA, but I don't know.

After watching the Dassey tapes, [Professor Richard] Ofshe believes Dassey was giving a forced confession. “I see something that almost makes one ashamed to be an American,” Ofshe said. “It’s that bad. I’ve studied the transcripts… they threatened him. They told him there are people who want to...

"The prosecuting attorney fought back, presenting witnesses who described the extreme measures used in the lab to ensure all evidence was kept separate and to prevent errors. Jeffry Nye, the lab supervisor insisted there was no contamination." link. A quick reading of page 12 of the Kessis...

Theodore Kessis wrote, “Review of the electropherograms associated with this negative control sample (NEG 041902) reveals that it was contaminated, a fact that cannot be disputed since Dr. Milligan himself labeled it with a note indicated as much (Appendix 8 – Electropherogram sample NEG...

The Kessis Report is a good discussion of some of the problems with the DNA evidence that led to Mr. Leiterman's conviction; I archived a copy, but the website where I found it is not working today. In my judgement contamination is a likely alternative to Mr. Leiterman's depositing DNA at the...

I found a link where Gary Leiterman discussed how he found the two polaroid photographs (I now see that someone else has already linked to it). I have no opinion on whether or not he is telling the truth, and it prompts the question of who else might have taken them (I seem to recall someone's...

I use the Leiterman case to teach about forensic DNA contamination and the association fallacy (see this link). The DNA in the Leiterman case is similar the case of Jane Durrua who was murdered in 1968. The case was cold, but then there was an apparent DNA match many years later. When the...

ImALawyer, To which other case do you refer? The name Beverly is unfamiliar to me.

Does anyone know where trial transcripts for the first trial could be found? There are some interesting forensic questions that could be raised about this case.

Redheadedgal, I agree with you. From the Preface of Raffaele's appeal: "In this petition, as we have done in the past, we will analyze both the position of Raffaele Sollecito as well as that of Amanda Knox, not only because the incorrect assessment of the evidence against [Knox] has, like in a...

Your answer fails to address the point I just made, that contamination was happening in runs at the same time as the clasp. It also fails to address the other problems in quantitating the DNA at this time, such as the absurdly high efficiency numbers. This makes the quantitation of DNA on the...

You are ignoring the contamination that was contemporaneous with the runs that had the bra clasp DNA. Two experiments, H11 and H12 in Run 570, contain standards with known concentrations of DNA, 0.023 pg/µL. They measured 140 and 76 pg/µL, respectively. In other words, they have more DNA than...

No, that is not my position at all. As for Professor Balding, he is an expert in statistics, not quantitative PCR. And he did not do a complete case review, just an analysis of the autosomal profile on the clasp.

Besides Stefanoni, Dr. Novelli also said that there was no contamination. Therefore his testimony also needs to be considered in light of his failure to find these problems in the quantitation data.