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SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
The Frye test, which comes from the 1923 case Frye v. United States 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir.) -
FIRST CASE USING DNA
In a case that took place in Leicester, England involving the rapes and murders of two teenagers, which took place in 1983 and 1986 respectively, a man named Richard Buckland had initially confessed to one of the two crimes. Because aspects of the other crime were very similar, law enforcement believed he was the perpetrator of both. -
MURDER CASE
In mid-1986, Tommie Lee Andrews was accused of the rape of at least twenty-four women. One of the women; Nancy Hodge was robbed and raped at knifepoint by the suspect of whom she only caught a quick glance which was not enough to physically identify her attacker. -
DNA Evidence Frees the Innocent
On February 5, 1987, Vilma Ponce, 20 years old and seven months pregnant, was found stabbed to death along with her 2-year-old daughter. The husband told police that he had seen a man leaving the building with blood on his hands. The man turned out to be 38-year-old Joseph Castro, a janitor's helper and neighborhood handyman who lived in the adjacent building. Ponce's husband could not identify Castro in a photo array, but the investigation continued -
Emergence of “John Doe” Warrants
In addition to facilitating “cold hits,” DNA database legislation 1999, a district attorney in Wisconsin became one of the first
prosecutors to obtain a warrant and file criminal charges
against a man identified in the warrant solely by his DNA profile.