BIO 301D Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: O. J. Simpson Murder Case, False Positive Rate, Innocence Project
Document Summary
Many wrongful convictions in us: mainly from bad data or bad methods. In many cases, methods were never tested or validated. Innocence project: started after oj simpson trial, report 344 exonerations (current) (20 were on death row at some time or another) Another site that reports 2,000 exonerations in the us: 67 people freed by dna testing after conviction between 2001-2002. 67 people = 2/3 of all people tested at the time. Recall four criteria of ideal methods: 1) reference database, 2) discrete characteristics used, 3) independent verification, 4) proficiency tests. 1)reference database existed since before mid-1900s: fbi had it, no way to search it until after about the year 2000, no way to screen it, not useful till much later. 2) no discrete characteristics for declaring a match until 2000. 3) no explicit protocol for matching before 2000: always up to the expert in the case.
