If the DNA doesn’t fit, you must … um, quit?
The pressure to close an unsolved murder case is great, and it’s even greater when police have a 26 year-old case and a suspect they *want* desperately to convict but are held back by a disappointing lack of evidence. That didn’t stop prosecutors in Toledo, Ohio from charging a 68 year old priest with the crime. In the light of all the recent sex abuse scandals facing the Roman Catholic church, it’s not surprising the prosecutors are feeling emboldened to go after them, even with flimsy cases.
And this one looks flimsy. Father Gerald Robinson is charged with the murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl even though the crime took place 26 years ago and recent DNA taken from her body and from the bloody altar cloth in which she was wrapped show NO match with the priest. In fact, the DNA found on the nun’s underwear probably belonged to some other unknown male, according to the DNA expert.
Undaunted, prosecutors are now arguing that the male DNA sample found on Sister Pahl’s underwear was small, and could have come from one of the investigators or someone else on the scene. Never mind Edmond Locard’s Transference Theory (when two objects meet, there is always a transference from one object to the other), or the small detail that if they could find small samples of an investigator’s DNA on the nun 26 years later, why are they not able to find ANY belonging to the man they claim brutally stabbed her repeatedly?
This case illustrates how creative prosecutors can use DNA evidence both offensively and defensively in their trials. It doesn’t matter what DNA tests show, all findings support guilt. If you can show some of the defendant’s DNA at the scene, you argue he’s guilty and the DNA proves it. If you find no DNA match, you argue that he’s guilty but that he didn’t leave any DNA behind. And if you find someone *else*’s DNA, you simply argue that it could have been the result of contamination during the investigation, but he’s still guilty.
Read the story here.
RP
May 11th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
[…] I wrote about this case earlier and called the evidence against Father Robinson “flimsy”. It was enough, however, for the jury to find him Guilty, so I stand rebuked. Still, when you consider that they found male DNA not only on the nun’s underwear, but under her fingernails (strongly indicating a struggle with her killer) and that it was NOT a match with Father Robinson, you have to wonder … why? The rest of the case was circumstantial, and the hard scientific evidence pointed to someone else. Guilty? (shakes head). […]