4 ms·
The rare instances where police plant drugs on suspects likely happens more often than it's caught, and planting DNA at a crime scene or asserting they got the
by motohagiography 8y ago
The rare instances where police plant drugs on suspects likely happens more often than it's caught, and planting DNA at a crime scene or asserting they got their sample from the scene is only marginally more trivial.
How is an investigator asserting that they found the trace DNA from hair or saliva they are presenting as evidence at the crime scene any different from any other assertion?
While these are exceptions, horrible abuses have already been committed by lying forensic specialists. In Canada, we had a forensic lab fabricate drug use evidence against mothers, who ended up losing their children. http://projects.thestar.com/motherisk/ http://projects.thestar.com/motherisk/ , similarly, a pathologist was charged for fabricating evidence as well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Smith_(pathologist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Smith_(pathologist) .
These are low likelihood scenarios, but with an extreme impact that has consequences for the integrity of the system. These are in recent memory, and only examples who were caught.
- bsenftner 8y agoThis is the vector that will be abused the most. There is no way to verify, other than the officer's word, where the DNA sample came from. Plus the fact that we shed DNA constantly, littering our own DNA any place we visit makes random DNA found in a location really just random DNA in the majority of cases.