Conclusion

The first applications of DNA technology in criminal cases took place in the United States and United Kingdom more than 30 years ago. What have we learned over the past three decades from the use of forensic DNA analysis in criminal and human rights investigations and humanitarian disasters? And what challenges, opportunities, and potential pitfalls lie ahead?...

Taking Stock

This chapter explores the evolving role of forensic genetics in human rights investigations and as a technology of postmortem identification for missing persons in ongoing conflict and post-conflict societies. How has DNA’s increasingly privileged place as a line of evidence impacted the field in terms of both medico-legal standards and heightened expectations among surviving kin and their communities? Drawing on interviews with leading figures in the field of forensic science and human rights/transitional justice (e.g., the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, and the Colibrí Center for Human Rights), buttressed by ethnographic analysis of exhumation and identification efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Uganda, the chapter provides an overview and commentary about the technology’s complicated place in unearthing truths and effecting repair.

Large Scale Identification of the Missing

This chapter describes the experiences of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in conducting large-scale, DNA-based identification of the missing, discussed within the context of policy and historical developments underpinning today’s requirement for effective investigations when persons go missing. These developments include a shift to the rule of law and human rights reference framework as part of advancing state responsibility on the issue of the missing. The chapter takes note of historical as well as rule-of-law initiatives at the international level in the wake of the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, including the creation of ICMP. Generally accepted as capable of establishing facts, forensic science, including DNA analysis, has become a centerpiece of effective investigations in the pursuit of justice at the individual and societal levels. However, access to forensic science is not universal, largely due to cost. The chapter discusses two limitations on using DNA to identify missing persons that drive cost: the use of kinship analysis and degraded DNA. DNA analysis through next generation sequencing (NGS), or massive parallel sequencing (MPS), will likely redress both shortcomings. In ICMP’s experience, innovation, research, and dedication can contribute to a more effective approach to accounting for missing persons; this in turn will contribute more broadly to the pursuit of justice and the advancement of human rights globally.

The Living Disappeared

This chapter tells the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, or Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and their search for more than 500 grandchildren who were kidnapped by the Argentine military or born in captivity during military rule from 1976 to 1983. Most of the parents of these children were executed and buried in clandestine graves, while their children were given to childless military and civilian couples. Hope turned the Abuelas into detectives. Over many years, they examined thousands of pages of public documents, conducted stakeouts, and went undercover in their search for clues to the whereabouts of their missing grandchildren. But sleuthing was easy compared to convincing courts that the children they had located were biologically related to the grandparents who claimed them. In spring 1984, several foreign geneticists came to the aid of the Abuelas. Six months later, the first grandchild was identified on the basis of genetic analysis and returned to her grandmother. DNA sequencing soon followed, and in 1987, the Argentine Congress passed a law establishing the Banco Nacional de Datos Genéticos (National Genetic Data Bank), dedicated exclusively to identifying Argentina’s missing children. To date, 127 stolen children have been identified, most of them based on DNA analysis. While tracing this history, the chapter explores the scientific, legal, and psychosocial challenges that have arisen during the Abuelas’ search for their missing grandchildren.

Introduction

Since its introduction in the late 1980s, DNA analysis has revolutionized the forensic sciences. It has helped to convict the guilty, exonerate the wrongfully convicted, identify victims of mass atrocities, prosecute human traffickers, and reunite families whose members have been separated by war and repressive regimes. Yet many of the scientific, legal, societal, and ethical concepts that underpin forensic DNA analysis remain poorly understood, and their application is sometimes controversial....

Forensic Genetics, Ethics, Privacy, and Public Policy

Chapter 15 covers various ethical issues associated with the use of DNA methods for forensic analyses and human rights investigations. Topics include informed consent and storage issues for samples and profiles; data security and privacy; identification of individuals using aggregate data from forensic, genealogical, research, or clinical databases; the burden of the obligation to report incidental findings that are medically actionable; cultural perspectives on genetic information; government misuse of potentially sensitive DNA data; public policy regarding the validity of pattern/experience evidence; and other non-DNA forensic science disciplines.

Immediacy and Authority

As DNA technology becomes more refined and more widely accessible, expectations increase for its ready application in postmortem recovery efforts, whether in response to mass disaster or mass atrocity. But whose expectations are being raised, and to what effect? This chapter examines the discourse of forensic intervention that privileges genetics as the necessary and immediate tool to restore identity and achieve social repair. It draws on the examples of two of the largest DNA-led human identification efforts, which ran nearly concurrently—the identification of the World Trade Center victims and the victims of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, specifically the Srebrenica genocide—to consider the interplay between evolving practice and anticipated outcomes, among both the scientific community and surviving kin.

Analysis of Forensic Mixtures

Chapter 3 discusses the challenges posed by forensic DNA specimens with multiple contributors. These mixed samples from two or more individuals are common in forensic cases, and comparing the profile of a suspect sample with the complex profile of the mixture is one of the most difficult problems in forensic DNA analysis. Mixtures with limited amounts of DNA create particular challenges for interpretation due to the possibility of missing data. The chapter discusses issues with the interpretation of mixed STR profiles, such as “stutter bands” and “allele drop-out.” It reviews specific cases and current approaches to deconvolution of the mixtures, including use of the recently developed software for probability-based statistical analysis of STR profiles and the potential of next generation sequencing. It also examines several statistical approaches to presenting the results of mixture analysis, such as the combined probability of inclusion and the likelihood ratio.

Exonerating the Wrongfully Convicted

Chapter 2 examines the critical role DNA analysis has played in exonerating the wrongfully convicted. Since the first DNA exoneration in 1988 of Gary Dotson, falsely convicted of rape in Illinois, hundreds of people have been exonerated through DNA analysis, including many who were on death row; minority groups have been disproportionately represented (approximately 70%). This chapter examines the various reasons that innocent people have been convicted, including coerced confessions and mistaken eyewitness identifications, and discusses several cases in which DNA evidence led to exoneration. It also discusses the establishment of the innocence movement, from the founding in 1983 of Centurion Ministries, an organization devoted to freeing innocent people from prison; to the formation in 1992 of the Innocence Project, which used DNA to free the innocent; to the global movement of today, in which more than 100 innocence organizations around the world work on reform and litigation.

Admissibility of DNA Evidence in Court

Chapter 13 offers an overview of the legal rules governing the admissibility of forensic DNA typing results in US court cases. It begins with the basic evidentiary and constitutional rules governing admissibility of DNA typing results, including the Frye and Daubert tests for reliability of expert methods, confrontation clause and hearsay limitations on offering a DNA interpretation based in part on the analysis of a nontestifying expert, and Fourth Amendment case law related to DNA results stemming from nonconsensual DNA sampling from a criminal suspect. It then explores the status of reliability challenges to various forms of DNA evidence, setting forth both areas of consensus, in which the reliability of DNA typing results will not likely be disputed, and areas of controversy. Finally, it explores the status of constitutional challenges to DNA evidence under the confrontation clause and Fourth Amendment and concludes with a view of DNA admissibility issues related to emerging issues such as phenotyping, next generation sequencing, and Rapid DNA.