In her paper, “Can DNA ‘Witness’ Race?: Forensic Uses of an Imperfect Ancestry Testing Technology” Duana Fulwilley writes about a specific case of ancestry testing used in criminal justice. On August 11th, 2004, Derrick Todd Lee was charged with murder and rape in South Louisiana. His racial identify was African American.

His conviction was based mainly off of his Y-Chromosome STR DNA profile, which matched the profile of DNA samples found on the victims of a serial killing in the early 2000s (which he accused of). This serial killing involved the deaths of seven women.

His conviction was a more complex process, however. First, a DNA sample was collected from him and went through genetic analysis that grouped him into one of four racial groups (by continent). This analysis made Lee, in 2004, the first people in the US to be made a suspect in a crime by a DNA test that racially profiled his DNA. The DNA test technology that analyzed Lee’s DNA was called “DNAWitness” — name that to promote the idea that technology was now powerful enough to act as an “expert witness” in the justice system.

DNAWitness compared Lee’s DNA with AIMs, a set of genetic markers collected from a reference group. The AIMs categorized four racial groups: African, Asian, European, and Native American — and through the test, Lee was identified as 85% Sub-Saharan African and 15% Native American.

DNAWitness, Duana Fulwilley concludes, has the potential to be an extremely powerful tool — but she also argues that it does not meet legal and scientific standards for trial admissibility to date. It has an extremely large margin of error, due to its use of AIMs, and while it can offer law enforcement a lot of help, it can also act as a large liability because its inaccuracy is not marketed as truthfully as it ought to be.

When Duana Fulwilley wrote her article in 2014, there were no official standards for molecular photofitting. However, a set of legal standards for science and technology did exist, in Notes to 702, Federal Rules of Evidence, and Duana Fulwilley cites them as such:

(1) ‘Whether the expert’s technique or theory can be challenged in some objective sense, or whether it is instead simply a subjective, conclusory approach that cannot be reasonably assessed for reliability;

(2) Whether the technique or theory has been subject to peer review and publication;

(3) The known potential rate of error of the technique or theory when applied;

(4) The existence and maintenance of standards and controls; and

(5) Whether the technique or theory has been generally accepted in the scientific community’

At the time of publication, DNAWitness failed 4 out of 5 of these criteria. DNAWitness again emphasizes the dangers of race, a social construct, in science due to its lack of accuracy. Not only has to be shown throughout history, as Yudell wrote, that scientists had extreme trouble remaining impartial to their studies due to personal interests, but it also contains little to no foundation in genetics because the idea of race does not exist — humans are 99.9% genetically identical. So the takeaway I personally gather from these readings, are that education must be increased about race in science — because the public is not granted easy access to the inaccuracy of these types of tests, and while they are marketed as concrete and definitive, they are in fact far from that. Thanks for reading!