Should the United States extradite Amanda Knox if the Italian government requests it?

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102. Just How Easily DNA Transfer Can Take Place

An Interview with Professor Gill, probably the top expert in the world on DNA profiling:


Q. What other cases have you had experience with elsewhere in the world, which would help us to put his Italian case into context?

A. There is one case I can allude to, which is the case of Adam Scott, which is quite a notorious case here in the UK. A man was accused of a rape, because his DNA profile was obtained from the swabs – the vaginal swabs, and it matched a man who was some hundreds of kilometres away from the crime scene. And he denied ever having been in the place in his life. The evidence was the DNA profile. He was arrested and incarcerated for about six months, and all the time he was protesting his innocence. Luckily for him it came to light that there had been a contamination event in the actual laboratory. His DNA profile had actually been submitted to the same laboratory a couple of weeks previously, and his DNA profile from that particular event from saliva, was transmitted into the casework analysis for the second system. So of course he came up positive for this particular case, but his DNA had actually been transferred from a previous event. So this is a very good illustration of DNA actually moving within the laboratory, and not only that, it can move from one case to another case. Fortunately for him there was sufficient evidence to show that contamination had actually occurred, and he was eventually released, although he was in prison for about six months before he was set free. So the fact that this kind of event can happen should make us all very concerned, and it should make us all very very aware that this is probably not a one off example. The problem is that if you observe a contamination event, and you prove a contamination event has occurred, then there are probably a large number of cases where (it has) occurred and you have not verified that a contamination event has actually happened; and therefore it is missed, and that is my biggest concern I think. For every mistake that you find, there are many which go undiscovered, and that means that there are probably innocent people in prison.

Q. Professor Gill, before taking our leave, could you give a final message to the Italian Public and its justice system on this complicated and poorly understood theme, with a view to pointing the way to how things might be improved in the future.

A. The first thing to do is to forget everything that you think you know about forensic science that you have gathered from TV shows. This is completely wrong, and really we have to start again. Forensic science is the same as any other science. That means that we need to make sure that we have very good evidence, and critically we always need to explore all possibilities, not just one or two obvious ones, but particularly how did the DNA get there, when did it get there? Is there evidence for contamination? And even when there isn’t evidence for contamination, are we sure that we are looking for it? Are laboratories themselves actually in a fit position to carry out this kind of profiling? Do they carry out laboratory controls to look for evidence of contamination within the laboratory, for example? How often do they clean the laboratory? Are they changing their latex gloves in between handling evidence for example? There are many, many important things to consider. The problem is that once a DNA profile is obtained, then the (DNA) evidence seems to counter evidence that points away from the suspect. And I call this the ‘swamping effect’. Everyone is so blinded by the huge power of DNA profiling that the obvious falls by the wayside. So DNA always has to be considered in the context of the other evidence, and should never be considered by itself.

You can read more at http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/peter-gill-interview/

And if you don't like that source, you can find many other sources. He is world-reknowned in his field.