Police use DNA to arrest identical twins for rape: but only one left DNA at the crimescene
WHAT to do when you rely on DNA evidence? Marseille police have arrested 24-year-old identical twins Elwin and Yohan. They traced DNA found at crimescenes to the twins.
One of them has been attacking women in the city, allegedly. Six women aged 22 to 76 have been attacked between September 2012 and January 2013. Police believe one of the twins is the criminal. But which one. The DNA of identical twins is almost identical. Camera footage shows a face. But whose?
Police could use science. But a test would cost over €1m for a genetic test to tell which twin is guilty.
A source tells French newspaper La Provence:
“For a normal analysis, we would compare 400 base pairs [of nucleotides] which make up DNA… [In this instance] We would be looking at billions.”
Both twins have been indicted and jailed. So. Guilt has been presumed in both parties?
In 2010 James and John Parr were both arrested after watches worth £10,000 were stolen from a shopping centre. Police used DNA tests to track the 25-year-old identical twins. Both b rother denied wrongdoing. The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to take the matter to court. CPS spokesman Rob Pett said: “Unless further evidence becomes available, we are unable to authorise any charge at this time.”
Innocence was presumed.
Can twins get away with it?
The Finns were both Air Corps veterans of World War II–George as a flight instructor, Charles as a B-17 pilot with 63 missions in Europe. After their discharges, the San Francisco-born Finns settled in Southern California, and in 1952 set about forming their own airline. They bought a surplus C-46 twin-engine transport for $21,000 from the Bakersfield school district, intending to refit it and operate it as the first ship of a non-scheduled airline called “The Flying Finn Twins Airline Inc.”
But the federal government sued, claiming that the school district had no right to sell the plane, and the Finns decided to battle for their plane, using their own unorthodox methods. One of them stole the airplane, and hid it at a desert airport in Nevada. From that point on, the handsome and articulate twins were headline news.
Eventually the twins and their plane were found by the FBI. The Finns were charged with theft, but a federal grand jury refused to indict them because a key prosecution witness could not tell which of the identical twins stole the aircraft.
In 2009:
Malaysian identical twin brothers have escaped hanging for drug trafficking as a court failed to decide which brother was the criminal, and cleared both.
A judge in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, said the case was unique and she could not send the wrong person to his death.In 2003 police arrested one brother found driving drugs to a house. The second twin arrived soon afterwards and was also arrested.Neither officers nor a DNA test could identify which twin owned the drugs.
Sathis and Sabarish Raj, 27, cried in court when they heard the judge say that the prosecution had failed to prove which twin had been arrested first with a car containing 166kg of cannabis and almost 2kg of raw opium.
According to the New Straits Times, the judge told the court: “I can’t be calling the wrong twin to enter his defence. I can’t be sending the wrong person to the gallows.”
What would you do to find the guilty party?
Posted: 10th, February 2013 | In: Reviews Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
