People v. Wesley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 2 district · 72 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 80 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “derived in turn from the fact that the overall configuration of the DNA, found in every cell in the human body (and for that matter in every living organism) containing a nucleus — over 99% of the cells of the human body — is different in every individual except in the case of identical twins. This fact is not only generally accepted by the scientific community to which it is related, but is uniformly accepted therein.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Lach v. Welch, No. Fa 93-0063955 (Aug. 15, 1997) · 1994 Conn. Super. Ct. 6566 - Lach v. Welch, No. Fa93-0063955 (Jun. 13, 1994)

2. ““DNA Fingerprinting, as applied to forensic identification, involves essentially six steps, all the scientific principles and technology of which have gained general acceptance in the scientific field in which they belong: (1) EXTRACTION OF DNA. The DNA is chemically extracted from the submitted evidentiary sample — semen found in the victim, blood, hair, or any other tissue thought to originate from the perpetrator of the crime— and purified; (2) FRAGMENTATION BY RESTRICTION ENZYMES. The DNA is then cut into fragments. The ‘molecular scissors’ used to cut the DNA are called restriction endonucleases, or restriction enzymes — enzymes that cleave the DNA molecule at specific base sequences; routinely, a restriction enzyme will cut everyone’s DNA in the same places, resulting in same-size fragment lengths — however, in every person’s DNA, variable lengths of repetitive ‘junk DNA’ periodically turn up. In those areas the cut points get shifted, resulting in fragments of varying lengths. (3) GEL ELECTROPHORESIS. The fragments of DNA are then subjected to a technique widely accepted by the scientific community, and much used particularly by molecular biologists, known as ‘gel[ 10 ] electrophoresis’; the purpose of this process is to arrange or line up the fragments of DNA according to length, for later comparative purposes. The process of gel electrophoresis essentially consists of placing the DNA fragments on an electrically charged flat gelatin surface containing agarose gel, a ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 80 Md. App. 31 - Cobey v. State

3. “The Human Gene Mapping Conference is a prestigious international organization of scientists that has adopted the responsibility of mapping the human genome. It meets every two years for the purpose of registering newly-discovered gene (allele) loci and probes and assigning names or numerical designations to them. Listing with the Human Gene Mapping Conference of a locus or a probe is equivalent to general acceptance thereof by the scientific community. *Page 968 "Dr. [Kenneth K.] Kidd, who has been extremely active in the Human Gene Mapping Conference, serving on many of its committees, Chairman of the DNA Committee for the next conference, and the scientist in charge of supervising the assignment of locus designation numbers, testified that all probes used by Lifecodes in its DNA Fingerprinting (i.e., all probes studied in [the above-named publication and used in the present case]) have been accepted, mapped and published by the Human Gene Mapping Conference.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 574 So. 2d 960 - Snowden v. State