Proof

"The sample was put into a DNA database and turned up a “hit” — a local man by the name of Lukis Anderson. Bingo. Mr. Anderson was arrested and charged with murder. There was one small problem: the 26-year-old Mr. Anderson couldn’t have been the culprit. During the night in question, he was at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, suffering from severe intoxication. Yet he spent more than five months in jail with a possible death sentence hanging over his head. Once presented with Mr. Anderson’s hospital records, prosecutors struggled to figure out how an innocent man’s DNA could have ended up on a murder victim. Late last month, prosecutors announced what they believe to be the answer: the paramedics who transported Mr. Anderson to the hospital were the very same individuals who responded to the crime scene at the mansion a few hours later."—Osagie K. Obasogie New York Times "High-Tech, High-Risk Forensics" (link)

"The murderer dubbed the Phantom of Heilbronn had been baffling German investigators for two years. The criminal was a rarity, a female serial killer, and a very busy one: police had linked DNA evidence from 40 crimes — including the infamous homicide of a policewoman in the southern German town of Heilbronn — to the same woman. Police had found her DNA on items ranging from a cookie to a heroin syringe to a stolen car. They had put a $400,000 reward on her head. Profilers from around Europe were called in to help hunt her down.[…] The police thought they'd been looking everywhere. But it turns out they should have been looking down — at the cotton swabs they were using to collect DNA samples. On March 26, German police revealed that the cotton swabs they use may have all been contaminated by the same worker at a factory in Austria — and that the Phantom of Heilbronn never existed."—Claudia Himmelreich Time World "Germany's Phantom Serial Killer: A DNA Blunder" 27 March 2009 (link)

“It is heartening that the mainstream scientific community today has validated so much of what the defense bar has been asserting for many years in the courts, the legislatures and in the public arena. This report should help avoid some of the heartache and injustice associated with the wrongful convictions and imprisonment resulting from junk science in the courtroom, and the myth that forensic science is infallible. The search for truth does not favor the prosecution or the defense, and neither should publicly funded forensic labs. The defense bar has long maintained that forensic laboratories and their personnel should be independent of the police and prosecution."—John Wesley Hall National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers News Release "National Academy of Sciences Finds Serious Deficiencies in Nations Crime Labs" 18 February 2009 (link)