Subject:
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Re: What's the point of wearing rubber gloves...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:59:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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1104 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur wrote:
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Two points:
- It is only a TV programme!
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No, this is NYPD 24/7, not NYPD Blue (if it was a fictional show, this would
have probably been a major plot point). This is a documentary show of real
members of the NYPD. This was a real detective manhandling his latex gloves on
a real murder case. Now, granted, he was just swabbing the smear to see if it
was human blood, and he was never shown touching either the smear or the swab
tip, so we can assume that there’s very little chance that he managed to
contaminate either that sample or that smear, so that specific bit of evidence
probably wasn’t affected, but if he’s that careless about putting his gloves on,
can the same be said for all of the evidence he’s gathered?
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- I expect all DNA tests would be checked against those involved in collecting the sample... likewise for fingerprints etc.
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It’s possible to have evidence, and even convictions, dismissed because of
improper evidence-gathering techniques. The purpose of wearing latex gloves is
to prevent DNA contamination, and if the defense can prove that you contaminated
the sample with your own DNA, they can claim that you might have either also
contaminated it with the defendant’s DNA, or that the combination of your DNA
and the “real” criminal’s DNA could have resulted in a false reading. I can see
two good overlapping fingerprints be distinguishable enough to separate, but DNA
is matched up in little tiny chunks, like trying to identify a book by a series
of 5-word fragments. Maybe the detective has a few matching fragments, and even
if you match his up with the sample, you don’t have any way of figuring out the
other key fragments of the original sample.
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