dna

[Katoninelive]

Just read about a guy whose done 27yrs & could be free on Wednesday after 'New' evidence shows that 'seman' which has now been tested for DNA proves he did not commit the crime. I was on Jury service a few years ago & the defence team wanted to re-test the 'seman' sample from the crime which happened 16yrs previous but it had been destroyed after 10yrs as that was the longest they could keep it? The man was found guilty(i went not guilty as they were no other evidence) & he still protests his innocence. I think he was 'set up'!

[wildwood]

I would have thought that there is no max storage period for DAN testing, whether semen or any other tissue.

Maybe the place where the specimen was kept has a 10year policy although I am not sure about the legality of destroying evidence that belong to unsolved crimes.

[chakka35]

Only a year or two ago the Appeal Court decided that James Hanratty was guilty of the A6 murder on DNA evidence, when that murder was committed in 1961!

The problem is not the shelf-life of DNA but whether a proper chain-of-custody was observed at the time, so that there could be no possible cross contamination between one item of evidence and another. This means keeping those items in sterile bags or other containers from the very moment they are discovered.

Since DNA 'fingerprinting' had never been heard of in 1961 it is quite impossible for anyone to say, nearly 50 years later, that items of clothing and so on were not handled by the same people, put down on the same bench or kept in the same police-station cupboard.

So I for one cannot imagine what the Appeal Court was thinking.

Anyway, there is no 10-year expiry period for the validity of DNA