DNA-cleared man free after three decades

https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-06-dna_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

If this DNA testing has been available since the late 1980's , I wonder why the wrong people were still going to prison?
This means the real child rapist has been free to continue his sick evil habits for the 30 years Towler had been serving the life sentence.

Because it's had to advance in that time. It's only now that we've hit the point where analysing a single drop of blood has been a viable option. I mean shows like CSI have them getting DNA from everything and anything which just does not happen. DNA is not the be all and end all of forensic science, never has been and never will be.

There's also the question of why use DNA for a case that was solved before the advent of DNA analysis? The budget already goes on on-going cases and cold cases. If you think DNA evidence could get your conviction overturned then you have to push.

I mean sheesh! No-one kicks up such a fuss about other advances in forensics that have proved other people innocent.

What other advances in forensics have proven people innocent after they have been convicted and are serving time ?

That poor guy

Imagine spending 30 years of your life trapped in jail, knowing you are innocent of the heinous crime you are accused of, and having everyone thinking you're a sicko child killing pedophile...

Well how about advances in fire investigation? I can't remember the guy's name but he was cleared of arson and killing his daughter due to advances in the investigation of fire. At the time he was convicted it was believed that glass only crazed when the temperature rose quickly as a result of an accelerant. Same went for "pour patterns" which are a result of carpet burning. At that time it was believed they marked where an accelerant had been poured on the carpet. It was later proven that the fire was an accident but he'd been executed by that time.

Forensic science advances all the time and as it does some people who have evaded the law are proven guilty and some of the wrongly convicted are proven innocent.

Thank you.
I'm gonna guess the advances are due to the technology they have now ? Which does away with the "human error" factor.

After thirty years of having to live with deal with that , I wonder ,is there even a chance at any sort of a 'normal' kind of life ?

Actually no. There will always be operator error. The field has expanded through experiments as well as technological advances. It took someone sitting down and working with glass to find out what conditions it does craze under. It took someone doing an experiment to prove that carpet does burn in an accidental house fire to realise that that's what the pour patterns where. This wasn't "human error", this what the literature at the time said was the cause.

As for DNA, nuh-uh. It took years of experiment to refine the technique to make it viable to run smaller samples. Human error not really involved here. The only thing you could argue erased human error there would be the thermocycler and all that did was reduce the time in which the temperature of the sample could be raised and reduced.

I suppose when it comes to something like that,it makes me reconsider why we DON"T have a death penalty here in Australia.
How does a legal system that got it wrong the first time say sorry to a family of an executed innocent person and sound sincere.

Even the man concerned here can't go back and take over from where he left off and no amount of money can make up for the greif he's been through in all that time.

Just goes to prove there's no such thing as proof positive.

Several months ago while posting in a thread about the death penalty I some info on the history of criminal investigation and that before any kind scientific investigation's were even thought of being an option, that the chance of innocent people being convicted because of opinons , guesswork or eye witnesses that had either not really witnessed anything or had been paid to say they had
was over 50% .
And this was up till mid 20th century .

In countries that don't have dna testing,that kind of thing would still be the norm I suppose.

We had an elderly man here who used to be in a TV series,some kid accused him of abuseing him as a child,he was arrested and charged,the media had a field day at his expence,it went to court and the kid under questioning broke and said it was all lies,even though the man was then proven innocent,he ended up commiting suicide,because everybody kept looking at him and pointing.
The poor man just couldn't handle being the centre of attention for something he was completely innocent of.I can't help but wonder how that kid and his parents feel today,knowing they contributed to him dying the way he did.

Was the kid and parents were after money because the old man was in show business ? That's one of the things I first thought when I read this news story. Even though the guy was found innocent and turned loose, there has been 30 years of people 'family , friends , neighbors ' thinking he was getting what he deserved "a life sentence" , those minds ain't gonna change just because he is out walking around. Add to the his mental state after being institutionalised for 30 years.

It's a cold hard fact that something has to done about it,and I know we'll have the ones who'll say "Two wrongs don't make a right",but my reply to them is no it won't "but revenge is a dish best served cold"