I’m watching Dateline and this suspect left a police interview and committed another murder. The first cops couldn’t arrest him because their evidence was all circumstantial. While they are looking for him now, the voiceover says DNA results are still not back. At this point it’s been several weeks. So Eli5 – DNA results: wtf takes so long?
Is there only one machine in the world? Can’t they move murder cases to the front of the line? Does the DNA fairy only come once a month? Does DNA take 500 hours to marinate? Can the cops buy another DNA machine? Do we need a GoFundMe?
In: 6
An ELI5 regarding why the reality of how long DNA takes seems unreasonable: every crime procedural drama on TV makes it look like DNA evidence only takes minutes or hours to process. Like every other aspect of real life crime investigations and trials, there’s a lot of waiting involved in analyzing evidence. That’s not interesting TV, it’s much more dramatic to show crimes being solved in a day.
That has actually affected how juries perceive the evidence presented in court – they can be suspicious of major crimes cases like rape and murder if the prosecution doesn’t have DNA evidence because they’re used to seeing it a lot on TV. They also assume it’s infallible. It’s similar to jurors’ preference for eyewitness testimony even though it’s one of the most unreliable forms of evidence.
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