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When Cook County prosecutors brought Cleveland Barrett to trial earlier this year for the predatory criminal sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl, they presented the jury hearing the case testimony from the alleged victim plus the kind of evidence that long has won convictions with its scientific certainty: DNA.
Indeed, Assistant State's Attorneys Krista Peterson and Jane Sack told jurors in closing arguments that the DNA obtained from the victim after the alleged incident in July 2010 was a match to Barrett's genetic profile and evidence that corroborated the victim's trial testimony.
"Who is the major profile in the DNA that's found?" Sack asked the jury, according to a transcript from the trial. "The defendant."
But this DNA was different. It was not from semen, as is often the case in rapes; instead it came from male cells found on the girl's lips. What's more, the uniqueness of the genetic link between the DNA and Barrett was not of the 1-in-several-billion sort that crime lab analysts often testify to in trials with DNA evidence. Instead, when Illinois State Police crime...