On Trial! Governing Forensic DNA Technologies in the USA

When DNA profiling was first introduced into the American legal system in late 1987, judges and prosecutors hailed it as the "greatest advance in crime fighting technology since fingerprints" Press accounts proclaimed that the technique would "revolutionize" law enforcement. In many ways, it has. In the past two decades, DNA evidence has been used in the USA to solve countless violent crimes that might otherwise have been relegated to cold case files, butting thousands upon thousands of rapists and murderers behind bars and inducing guilty pleas for thousands more.