Word: crimed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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RESULT Have Rudy's tough-on-crime tactics spun the police force out of control...
...reason, the Innocence Project has shown, is that juries often don't require much evidence to convict people of serious crimes. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the case against Fritz--no eyewitnesses, no evidence linking him to the victim and no credible evidence linking him to the crime scene--was painfully weak. So was the case in Tulsa, Okla., against Tim Durham, who spent six years in prison (of a 3,220-year sentence) for the rape of an 11-year-old girl, until DNA cleared him. The jury ignored 11 alibi witnesses who swore Durham...
While DNA makes headlines by exonerating people of crimes they were convicted of years ago, the same technique is enabling police across the country to track down and put away criminals who might otherwise have gone free. DNA is the biggest thing to happen in crime solving since fingerprints--and it's likely to be a lot more useful. Fingerprints can be used only when a perpetrator happens to leave a clean imprint. But DNA can be taken from hair, sweat or saliva. It even has a convenient tendency to fall off skin, leaving genetic markers behind...
...harnessing the crime-busting power of DNA is building up state databases, like the one that found Smith's rapist. Forty-three states now have such databases, and they are growing rapidly. Virginia's DNA bank, for example, currently has 190,000 samples, which have produced about 60 matches so far. Those successes are likely to increase rapidly as Virginia adds 8,000 DNA samples a month...
...next big step is linking the states' databases. The FBI has started providing states with free CODIS (combined DNA index system) software, which digitizes and compares DNA profiles. This has already produced some impressive results. After a series of rapes in Sarasota, Florida investigators entered DNA from the crime scene into the national system. The DNA turned out to match that of Mark Daigle, who had served time in Virginia six years earlier for burglary. Florida officials arrested Daigle, and last year he was convicted of rape...