The Republicans who dominate the state’s Joint Finance Committee plan to keep Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to collect DNA samples from people who have been arrested on suspicion of felonies. But they could drop the plan to take them from those arrested for certain misdemeanors, the co-chairman of the committee said Thursday.
Read More »Tag Archives: DNA
Budget committee to consider DNA expansion
Wisconsin lawmakers are set this week to consider Gov. Scott Walker's plan to take DNA from anyone arrested for a felony and anyone convicted of any crime.
Read More »Husband convicted in slaying of Mich. woman, 79
A 50-year-old Upper Peninsula man charged in the disappearance and slaying of his 79-year-old wife has been convicted of first-degree murder and other charges.
Read More »Wis. court upholds charging unknown suspect
A Wisconsin appeals court says prosecutors legally charged an unknown suspect using only DNA markers rather than a full profile.
Read More »Civil suit in homicide conviction will proceed
A federal judge has allowed an amended civil rights lawsuit filed by a man exonerated in a 1980 sexual assault and strangulation to proceed.
Read More »Supreme Court Justices to consider out-of-state lab testing
If a Wisconsin defendant on trial for two sexual assaults cannot cross-examine the out-of-state lab analyst who prepared his underlying DNA profiles, have his constitutional rights under the Confrontation Clause been violated?
Read More »Editorial: DNA numbers don’t add up
Politicians love easy sound bites and panacea numbers, and budget season is rife with such vague points of fact.
The DNA debate: Justice system divided over expanding collection of genetic evidence
DNA evidence helped put Chris Ochoa behind bars for a murder he did not commit.
US Supreme Court questions legality of warrantless DNA collection
Exactly two weeks after Gov. Scott Walker proposed expanding DNA collection efforts in Wisconsin for those arrested on felony charges, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a related case Justice Samuel Alito Jr. called “perhaps, the most important criminal procedure case that this court has heard in decades.”
Read More »High court takes up question of arrestee DNA sampling
The Supreme Court will soon decide what one justice called its most important criminal procedure case in decades: whether to allow police to take DNA samples from people who have been arrested.
Read More »Walker’s budget would fund attorney raises
Gov. Scott Walker's budget would lay out more than $7 million for raises for assistant prosecutors and public defenders.
Read More »Walker proposes expanding DNA collection (UPDATE)
Gov. Scott Walker wants to spend $6 million on expanding DNA collection efforts to include anyone arrested on a felony charge and anyone convicted of a crime, a move the Republican has argued will help police solve more crimes.
Read More »Low payout limits can hinder wrongfully convicted
An innocent Wisconsin man was convicted of homicide. He served 23 years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA tests. But a Wisconsin claims board awarded him just $25,000, the maximum allowed under state law.
Appeals court denies new trial for Dassey
A state appeals court has rejected Brendan Dassey's request for a new trial on charges that he helped kill a young woman in 2005 in one of Wisconsin's most notorious crimes.
Read More »New federal law could fund DNA collection in state
Republicans scratching for a way to fund Gov. Walker's plan to collect DNA from suspects upon arrest may have a chance at extra dollars courtesy of Congress.
Read More »Wis. AG wants millions from agencies
The Wisconsin Justice Department wants to shift millions of dollars from schools, prisons, gang diversion programs and public defenders to pay for collecting DNA upon arrest and fund services for sexual assault victims.
Read More »Criminal Procedure — statute of limitations — DNA
11-2984 U.S. v. Hagler
Read More »Sex offender suspected in 1970 child murder
Virginia Davis describes says the pain left behind by her 9-year-old sister's 1970 rape and strangulation as being like "a million holes."
DOJ wants DNA collection expanded
The Wisconsin Department of Justice wants to cast a wider net for collecting DNA samples.
Read More »Federal Circuit ruling a win for biotech field, sets up high court showdown
In a second victory for the biotech industry in one year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reinstated its ruling that a company’s isolation of human genetic material, and its process for using that material to determine the effectiveness of certain cancer therapies, meet the threshold test for patent-eligibility.
Read More »Appeals court upholds conviction in 1999 homicide (UPDATE)
A Wausau man accused of savagely beating a woman a dozen years ago was properly convicted, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Read More »US Supreme Court fractures on expert testimony issue
The Confrontation Clause does not bar an expert from testifying at a criminal trial that a DNA profile produced by an outside laboratory matched the defendant’s state lab DNA profile, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a fractured opinion.
Read More »US high court sides with state in DNA case
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a rape conviction over objections that the defendant did not have the chance to question the reliability of the DNA evidence that helped convict him.
Read More »Evidence mounts in law enforcement storage rooms
Evidence in criminal cases is piling up quickly in law enforcement storage rooms, partly because of changes to Wisconsin law meant to help inmates overturn wrongful convictions.
Read More »Dane Co. DA approves DNA testing in 1994 killing
Prosecutors have approved a round of DNA testing in a 1994 case that the Wisconsin Innocence Project says could clear a Spring Green woman in another woman's death.
Read More »State bill would lift statute of limitations on certain violent crimes
A fast-tracked legislative proposal lifting the statute of limitations on a handful of violent crimes would erase the legal barrier for victims to potentially receive justice against an offender, but it also could make cases harder to defend after six years.
Read More »Does Confrontation Clause bar expert DNA testimony?
The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have already looked at the issue of DNA evidence in criminal cases, with several rulings restricting prosecutors’ ability to admit such data without calling the lab analysts who prepared the tests to testify.
Read More »Innocence Project: DNA shows wrongful conviction (UPDATE)
By JIM SALTER Associated Press ST. LOUIS (AP) – Innocence Project attorneys cited DNA and other evidence Monday in asking a judge to free a man who has spent nearly three decades in prison for breaking into a St. Louis woman’s home and raping and killing her. George Allen Jr. was sentenced to 95 years in prison in the death ...
Read More »Innocence Project gets $1 million in grants
For the second time in three weeks, the U.S. Department of Justice has awarded a grant to the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School's Frank J. Remington Center.
Read More »Federal Circuit decides human genes are patentable
Intellectual property lawyers say the biotech field dodged a bullet with a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit finding human genes are patentable.
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