DEFENSE LAWYERS MUST HAVE BEEN THRILLED BY the article on the front page of the New York Times. It said a report about to be released by the National Research Council would reject "DNA fingerprinting," also known as DNA typing.
The practice involves testing material like hair or blood from a crime scene and matching DNA in it to samples from a suspect. In theory, the chances of a mistake are fewer than 1 in 100,000, compared with 1 in 10 for conventional blood typing.
But while DNA typing has been widely used since the mid-1980s, defense lawyers often cried foul....