The New York City medical examiner’s office is undertaking an unusual review of more than 800 rape cases in which critical DNA evidence may have been mishandled or overlooked by a lab technician, resulting in incorrect reports being given to criminal investigators.   Supervisors h... [More]

In the court room, forensics and science can be extremely powerful. Forensic chemists can tell the jury whether DNA was present, what drug the victim was given or what cleaning solution was used to hide the evidence. But what happens when the trusted scientist is a fraud? In September, Annie Dookha... [More]

Wednesday, the nation was peppered with breathless, if thinly sourced, reports of a shocking link between two very different, seemingly unrelated crimes: a match between DNA samples lifted from the CD player owned by and found near the corpse of slain Julliard student Sarah Fox in 2004 and ones ... [More]

A link between DNA from the unsolved killing of Sarah Fox, a Juilliard student, in 2004 and DNA taken from a chain placed at the site of an Occupy Wall Street action in March may be the result of a laboratory error, according to two people briefed on the investigation.   One o... [More]

About a year ago, I asked whether any false convictions have resulted from DNA database searches . Of course, if there are any, they might be hard to find, but there is a known recent case of a false initial accusation. It came about because a laboratory contaminated a crime-scene sample with DN... [More]

When Cook County prosecutors brought Cleveland Barrett to trial earlier this year for the predatory criminal sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl, they presented the jury hearing the case testimony from the alleged victim plus the kind of evidence that long has won convictions with its scientific... [More]

A teenager who spent months behind bars wrongly accused of rape after a DNA blunder has spoken of his 'relief, anger and disgust' after the charge was dropped. Adam Scott, 19, was due to stand trial next month in connection with a sex attack on a woman at Plant Hill Park in Blackley. His DNA... [More]

Scores of convictions for serious crimes may have to be reviewed after a serious blunder by a leading private forensics firm led to a suspected rapist being acquitted, the Guardian has learned. The company, LGC Forensics, has admitted that a sample at one of its laboratories became so contami... [More]

This is the stuff of nightmares: Genetically-modified (GM) plants escaping the confines of agriculture and invading the wild. We thought regular invasive species were bad? They seem tame compared to genetic contamination of the wild. Even more alarming: Some of the plants had a mix of modified... [More]