This remark by you was in Jan. 2003:
> Police around Chicago area are today gunning for the governor, to say
> the least. They hate him. Police do not like DNA testing either,
> except when the results go the way they want.
And occasionally I hear of remarks "just the truth/facts" (remember
"just the facts" from the fictitious Sgt. Joe Friday, played by Jack
Webb in the "Dragnet" TV series?). Sigh. (I have watched many
forensics programs.)
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is a new governor in Illinois
in the past year. And where did I read it the other day, the Boston
Globe perhaps? ... it seems some state passed a new law allowing
prisoners to petition to get a DNA test which could possibly prove
their innocence, but the prosecutor had to okay the test before
the prisoners could receive it or benefit from it. Since prosecutors
are usually just rubber stamps for police, you know the likelyhood
of a prosecutor agreeing to such a test is very slight unless it was
a case where the heat was on so badly.
In Chicago, police get in trouble now and then, (arson, drug sales and
use, assault, rape, etc) but the *only time* anything is ever done
about it is when the case becomes *so* public and the public gets *so*
stirred up about it and the newspapers get so up in arms about it,
that the prosecutor has to act. So it does not surprise me that they
play games with DNA testing if they can. I don't know anything about
reading/interpreting those tests, do you?
A recent case (Wes Leatherock knows about it as do most folks in
Oklahoma) had a forensics technician (Joyce someone) confess to
deliberatly screwing up the results of various scientific tests
performed as part of police investigations. Any number of guys went
to prison, what the hell, one or two may have been executed. Joyce
said the police told her how they wanted the tests to turn out, and
who was she, she whimpered, to not follow orders from the brave,
courageous police officers who told her what to do. She was just
following orders. I don't know what ever became of her. The Tulsa
World Newspaper raised so much hell about it they had to sacrifice
her, I know that much. Wes, how did that ever turn out? I know a lot
of the guys in prison who had been victimized by her 'tests' wanted
to be retested or set free. PAT]
Carl Moore (cmoore@ARL.ARMY.MIL)