CSI Helps Criminals Get Away With Crimes

It's still one of the few shows on TV worth watching. But it comes at a price.

For example, there has been an increasing use of plastic gloves by burglars...

For the love of everything larcenous, a burglar who hasn't heard about fingerprints by now isn't going to be in business very long.

But this is the one I've always thought was pretty clever, and I'm sad to see that criminals are finally figuring this trick out:

...and a practice reported by police in northern England in which car thieves leave cigarette butts picked up from the street inside vehicles, hoping to lay a trail of false DNA evidence.

See, that's good. Real good. Even if they can place *you* at the scene of a crime, they have someone else's DNA there too which they can't explain (or, most likely, even identify, unless the DNA happens to come from someone in the system already).

Which, if the case against you is just circumstantial plus DNA, may very well constitute reasonable doubt.

Still, they're getting better at placing you at the scene, even if you touch nothing at all:

However, the magazine warned that outwitting the scientists was increasingly hard.

In a test of DNA contamination, Professor Rutty asked a volunteer to walk around a sterile room while speaking. He was able to retrieve the man's DNA even though he had been in the room only a few seconds.

posted by Ace at 04:30 PM

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