When Oscar Thwala was sentenced to life imprisonment 10 years ago on three counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping, and illegal possession of ammunition and firearms, he’d never heard of DN... Read more
The government’s failure to set up new forensic labs and insufficient trained manpower is causing significant delay in criminal investigations. Today, the country has only 25 forensic labs w... Read more
With its decision in Maryland v. King [pdf], the US Supreme Court finally stepped into the debate about the use of DNA databases in the criminal justice system. The United States now has the... Read more
A DNA database could be a phenomenal tool for the criminal process – but we need to avoid the use of generalised rhetoric and instead engage in an open and informed debate on the type of dat... Read more
Ireland’s human rights watchdog, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), has welcomed the publication today (11 September 2013) of draft legislation intended to establish a DNA d... Read more
THE Irish Innocence Project welcomes the new DNA database bill, last heard of in 2010. In the US and UK, many people have been exonerated by so-called “cold-searching” of DNA dat... Read more
Criminals convicted of serious offences will be required to submit a sample of DNA which will be retained on a centralised database to aid the Garda in solving future crimes, under new legis... Read more
The so-called DNA bill is one step closer to being signed into law after the National Assembly passed it on Thursday afternoon. There was a lengthy delay before the bill was finally approved... Read more
The National Assembly will vote on the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill on Thursday, the ANC in Parliament said. “It is of special significance that this bill will pas... Read more
University of Leicester forensic scientists have created the UK’s first cat DNA database – which has already helped convict a killer. Experts in the University’s Department of Genetics have... Read more