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Ignoring for a moment the obvious hitch that sperm does not automatically equal murder, there's also the problem that DNA forensics suffers from the same fakery

Ignoring for a moment the obvious hitch that sperm does not automatically equal murder, there's also the problem that DNA forensics suffers from the same fakery problem that other criminal forensic techniques suffer from especially when samples are old and mixed https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727733-500-fallible-dna-evidence-can-mean-prison-or-freedom/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727733-500-fallible... DNA matching from a decades old mixed tissue slide is not an exact process and many factors from handling to a desire to close the case can lead to a wrong conclusion. The most that can be said is that the detectives are satisfied enough to stop digging, not that the case is solved. Let's remember that a posthumous process allows for zero defense and criminal justice depends on defense. And besides all of that, it strikes me as wildly unethical to burden the family with this information just to satisfy detective curiosity and desire for closure. I see zero benefit to going through the final steps after they determined that their suspect had already died. The corpse's ashes can't go to prison. The family just lives with this now. That's a negative outcome.

temp8964 5y ago
A. They tested the suspect's children's DNA and got a positive. B. It's true sperm doesn't equal murder. But in this case the victim was asexually assaulted and then murdered. The likelihood of both crimes committed by the same person is way higher than two different persons.
- vmception 5y ago
  Does my reasonable doubt count? The fall guy they pulled in for a raped and murdered jogger in NYC was willing to confess and then was like "woah woah I didn't do the rape where did that charge come from" There could just as easily be a Brock Turner in the woods seeing an incapacitated girl and fiddling around, except this time the victim would already be or about to be dead. Too many examples for me to make that conclusion. So, my reasonable doubt would count if I was on the jury. Convicting/Acquitting someone is one thing, we all pat ourselves on the back, but the thing that really bothers me is when the dangerous person is still out there. Who cares about debating the doubt when there is a greater likelihood of ongoing danger in the community but now the investigation isn't even happening. Its debating someone's freedom versus debating the safety of the community which is a larger group of people, the greater doubt is actually about whether the community is now safe instead of whether I like this person's alibi.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - valuearb 5y ago
    So you think the accused killers family would be much happier if they found out he didn’t kill either of them, just had sex with the dying girl and left her to die?
    - vmception 5y ago
      That's where your mind went. In this article, it would be just as easy for them to have had consensual sex beforehand. The feelings of the family is not a factor in investigating and prosecuting the right people.
      - bytelines 5y ago
        > That's where your mind went This is in the post he's replying to: > There could just as easily be a Brock Turner in the woods seeing an incapacitated girl and fiddling around, except this time the victim would already be or about to be dead. Brock Turner is a well known recent case of rape, the rapist (Brock Turner) sexually assaulted an unconscious woman before two graduate students intervened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner
        vmception 5y ago
        Except they were conflating the examples with the article along with the Brock Turner reference Its almost impossible to respond except in the way that I did Half the parent level comments are also saying semen isn't a great for helping with anything except investigating a sexual assault
      - valuearb 5y ago
        > “ There could just as easily be a Brock Turner in the woods seeing an incapacitated girl and fiddling around, except this time the victim would already be or about to be dead.” You posited he could have merely raped the dying victim (semen isn’t left by “fiddling around”). I ask you again whether hit matters if he was a rapist-murderer or merely a rapist of bound murder victims. Reasonable doubt doesn’t mean constructing convoluted scenarios to explain how he left his semen in her without raping or murdering her. Occams Razor falls very hard on the obvious answer here.
TheJoeMan 5y ago
I agree. I believe this article is to be a “tug your heartstrings” to be against the very logical restriction on forensic DNA analysis by “reconstructing a reverse family tree” which is quite often wrong.
- version_five 5y ago
  Yeah, what caught my attention was the casual > although new state legislation restricting forensic genealogy could complicate matters as if affording important privacy protections is a "complication" that interferes with their goal of a safer world. Much of the article reads like a thinly veiled lobbying piece for why police should be less restricted in how they use this technique.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  While it can be wrong the cost of a wrong is minor--they test the DNA, it doesn't match, they continue their search, now perhaps with better information as to how the tree fits together.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    > While it can be wrong the cost of a wrong is minor NO. NO NO NO. The cost is VERY much NOT MINOR. In the 80s and 90s, DNA was over used and it was incorrectly used to put the wrong people in prison for a very long time. The cost of mistakes is NOT trivial.
ChrisKnott 5y ago
Why is it a burden for the family? The family surely wanted the case solved...?
- vorticalbox 5y ago
  I believe the comment was about the murders family. Up until this point they had no idea, they now have to live with that knowledge. The only people being punished now are the these family members who did nothing wrong.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    The worst part for the family is that the media can label their father a rapist and murderer without him actually having been convicted. The police have strong evidence, from the sound of it, but with a living person the news media wouldn't be allowed to go around saying unequivocally "he's the guy" without a guilty verdict. The upshot is that even if there's been a mistake, this man's name will never be cleared, and his family will just have to live with this.
    - jiqiren 5y ago
      The family agreed to help the police figure it out. Maybe their reaction to learning the news was more like "yeah this makes sense - dad was an abusive asshole my whole life. At least I wasn't killed".
      - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
        The police going to ask them in the first place was a wrong decision. A family minding their own business doing nothing wrong should not be burdened with someone showing up at their door saying "we think that you're the children of a murder rapist. If you don't help us that's definitely what we're going to conclude. If you do help us there's a chance that we'll conclude it anyway, but you never know. He's dead now so we have no requirement to overcome a legal defense. What say you?" That's known as a devil's bargain. > Maybe their reaction to learning A more likely outcome is irreparable trauma.
fairity 5y ago
> I see zero benefit to going through the final steps after they determined that their suspect had already died If the victim has living friends & family, it provides closure. Additionally, solving cases, however old, boosts public confidence that crimes will not go unpunished, which in turn acts as a deterrent for future crime.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  The threat of punishment has never been shown to be a deterrent to crime. EDIT: I would have thought this was a well-known issue by now, but for those who are disagreeing, "punishments do not deter crime" is also the opinion of the National Institute of Justice: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Do more drivers turn right at red lights in the US than in say UK were it is illegal?
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      The legality of the action is not the only difference between those two locales. A right turn on red is significantly more dangerous in the UK than in the US.
      - rightbyte 5y ago
        Oh ... ye well lets pretend I wrote "turn left at red lights in UK" shall we?
  - krrrh 5y ago
    I think you’re getting downvotes for the statement “never been shown”. It’s an overly broad claim, and even the link you posted talks more about the severity of punishment being a weaker deterrent than the certainty of being caught (and punished). There’s still no doubt that if theft was suddenly not punished at all then there would be more theft. From other reading I’ve done the consistency of punishment is more important, and it’s better for criminal justice systems to provide a certain small punishment than an inconsistent outsized punishment, and this has a lot to do with the way humans evaluate risks, and improved paths towards helping criminals becoming non-criminals. Anyway, I learned a bit from the link you posted, mostly that this sort of thinking is mainstream enough to be presented like this by the DoJ. So have my upvote.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
The potential benefits here are that it's possible the assumed culprit has committed other crimes, and this knowledge could solve other cases, some where potentially the crime has been pinned to an innocent person. I'm unsure how this potentially positive match would enter databases though, and find it very unlikely that any potentially "solved" case would have DNA tested against such a database. Publishing the assumed culprit's name and details seems fairly egregious though.
- lolinder 5y ago
  Yes, the publishing of the details is what gets to me. Throughout the article they treat the case as solved and the man as the guilty party, which they would never do to a living person before a verdict. To thousands of NPR readers, this man is not only the prime suspect but also the guilty party, in spite of the fact that charges will never be filed and guilt or innocence will never be formally determined.
bsder 5y ago
In addition, why is it that these people were missed on the initial investigations? For example, the Golden State Killer had a whole set of characteristics that should have narrowed it down to him. I suspect this case is similar.

temp8964 5y ago

A. They tested the suspect's children's DNA and got a positive. B. It's true sperm doesn't equal murder. But in this case the victim was asexually assaulted and then murdered. The likelihood of both crimes committed by the same person is way higher than two different persons.

vmception 5y ago
Does my reasonable doubt count? The fall guy they pulled in for a raped and murdered jogger in NYC was willing to confess and then was like "woah woah I didn't do the rape where did that charge come from" There could just as easily be a Brock Turner in the woods seeing an incapacitated girl and fiddling around, except this time the victim would already be or about to be dead. Too many examples for me to make that conclusion. So, my reasonable doubt would count if I was on the jury. Convicting/Acquitting someone is one thing, we all pat ourselves on the back, but the thing that really bothers me is when the dangerous person is still out there. Who cares about debating the doubt when there is a greater likelihood of ongoing danger in the community but now the investigation isn't even happening. Its debating someone's freedom versus debating the safety of the community which is a larger group of people, the greater doubt is actually about whether the community is now safe instead of whether I like this person's alibi.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- valuearb 5y ago
  So you think the accused killers family would be much happier if they found out he didn’t kill either of them, just had sex with the dying girl and left her to die?
  - vmception 5y ago
    That's where your mind went. In this article, it would be just as easy for them to have had consensual sex beforehand. The feelings of the family is not a factor in investigating and prosecuting the right people.
    - bytelines 5y ago
      > That's where your mind went This is in the post he's replying to: > There could just as easily be a Brock Turner in the woods seeing an incapacitated girl and fiddling around, except this time the victim would already be or about to be dead. Brock Turner is a well known recent case of rape, the rapist (Brock Turner) sexually assaulted an unconscious woman before two graduate students intervened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner
      - vmception 5y ago
        Except they were conflating the examples with the article along with the Brock Turner reference Its almost impossible to respond except in the way that I did Half the parent level comments are also saying semen isn't a great for helping with anything except investigating a sexual assault
    - valuearb 5y ago
      > “ There could just as easily be a Brock Turner in the woods seeing an incapacitated girl and fiddling around, except this time the victim would already be or about to be dead.” You posited he could have merely raped the dying victim (semen isn’t left by “fiddling around”). I ask you again whether hit matters if he was a rapist-murderer or merely a rapist of bound murder victims. Reasonable doubt doesn’t mean constructing convoluted scenarios to explain how he left his semen in her without raping or murdering her. Occams Razor falls very hard on the obvious answer here.

TheJoeMan 5y ago

I agree. I believe this article is to be a “tug your heartstrings” to be against the very logical restriction on forensic DNA analysis by “reconstructing a reverse family tree” which is quite often wrong.

version_five 5y ago
Yeah, what caught my attention was the casual > although new state legislation restricting forensic genealogy could complicate matters as if affording important privacy protections is a "complication" that interferes with their goal of a safer world. Much of the article reads like a thinly veiled lobbying piece for why police should be less restricted in how they use this technique.
LorenPechtel 5y ago
While it can be wrong the cost of a wrong is minor--they test the DNA, it doesn't match, they continue their search, now perhaps with better information as to how the tree fits together.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  > While it can be wrong the cost of a wrong is minor NO. NO NO NO. The cost is VERY much NOT MINOR. In the 80s and 90s, DNA was over used and it was incorrectly used to put the wrong people in prison for a very long time. The cost of mistakes is NOT trivial.

ChrisKnott 5y ago

Why is it a burden for the family? The family surely wanted the case solved...?

vorticalbox 5y ago
I believe the comment was about the murders family. Up until this point they had no idea, they now have to live with that knowledge. The only people being punished now are the these family members who did nothing wrong.
- lolinder 5y ago
  The worst part for the family is that the media can label their father a rapist and murderer without him actually having been convicted. The police have strong evidence, from the sound of it, but with a living person the news media wouldn't be allowed to go around saying unequivocally "he's the guy" without a guilty verdict. The upshot is that even if there's been a mistake, this man's name will never be cleared, and his family will just have to live with this.
  - jiqiren 5y ago
    The family agreed to help the police figure it out. Maybe their reaction to learning the news was more like "yeah this makes sense - dad was an abusive asshole my whole life. At least I wasn't killed".
    - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
      The police going to ask them in the first place was a wrong decision. A family minding their own business doing nothing wrong should not be burdened with someone showing up at their door saying "we think that you're the children of a murder rapist. If you don't help us that's definitely what we're going to conclude. If you do help us there's a chance that we'll conclude it anyway, but you never know. He's dead now so we have no requirement to overcome a legal defense. What say you?" That's known as a devil's bargain. > Maybe their reaction to learning A more likely outcome is irreparable trauma.

fairity 5y ago

> I see zero benefit to going through the final steps after they determined that their suspect had already died If the victim has living friends & family, it provides closure. Additionally, solving cases, however old, boosts public confidence that crimes will not go unpunished, which in turn acts as a deterrent for future crime.

moron4hire 5y ago
The threat of punishment has never been shown to be a deterrent to crime. EDIT: I would have thought this was a well-known issue by now, but for those who are disagreeing, "punishments do not deter crime" is also the opinion of the National Institute of Justice: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Do more drivers turn right at red lights in the US than in say UK were it is illegal?
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    The legality of the action is not the only difference between those two locales. A right turn on red is significantly more dangerous in the UK than in the US.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      Oh ... ye well lets pretend I wrote "turn left at red lights in UK" shall we?
- krrrh 5y ago
  I think you’re getting downvotes for the statement “never been shown”. It’s an overly broad claim, and even the link you posted talks more about the severity of punishment being a weaker deterrent than the certainty of being caught (and punished). There’s still no doubt that if theft was suddenly not punished at all then there would be more theft. From other reading I’ve done the consistency of punishment is more important, and it’s better for criminal justice systems to provide a certain small punishment than an inconsistent outsized punishment, and this has a lot to do with the way humans evaluate risks, and improved paths towards helping criminals becoming non-criminals. Anyway, I learned a bit from the link you posted, mostly that this sort of thinking is mainstream enough to be presented like this by the DoJ. So have my upvote.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

The potential benefits here are that it's possible the assumed culprit has committed other crimes, and this knowledge could solve other cases, some where potentially the crime has been pinned to an innocent person. I'm unsure how this potentially positive match would enter databases though, and find it very unlikely that any potentially "solved" case would have DNA tested against such a database. Publishing the assumed culprit's name and details seems fairly egregious though.

lolinder 5y ago
Yes, the publishing of the details is what gets to me. Throughout the article they treat the case as solved and the man as the guilty party, which they would never do to a living person before a verdict. To thousands of NPR readers, this man is not only the prime suspect but also the guilty party, in spite of the fact that charges will never be filed and guilt or innocence will never be formally determined.

bsder 5y ago

In addition, why is it that these people were missed on the initial investigations? For example, the Golden State Killer had a whole set of characteristics that should have narrowed it down to him. I suspect this case is similar.