Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> StandDown Texas Project

Criminal Law

: StandDown Texas Project

More on Familial DNA

By Steve Hall

Natasha Singer writes, "In Fighting Crime, How Wide Should a Genetic Net Reach?" for the Saturday edition of the New York Times. Recently, forensic scientists in California used a genetic analysis procedure called ?familial searching? or ?kinship searching? to help the police identify a suspect in the ?Grim Sleeper? serial murder case ? and they did so by using a DNA sample collected for another purpose from the suspect?s own son. The Los Angeles police later arrested the father, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who has since been charged with 10 counts of murder. Forensic scientists routinely use a standard search method to try to identify a suspect who has left bits of DNA at a crime scene. They use a computer analysis to compare DNA from the scene to DNA profiles of known convicted offenders stored in a state database...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on July 26, 2010 (boomark / email).