Twins' DNA Foils Police 209
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that James and John Parr were both arrested after watches worth £10,000 were stolen from a shopping center. Police found blood on a piece of glass at the scene of the crime and traced it back to the 25-year-old identical twins through DNA tests. But James and John both denied the theft and, because they have identical DNA, it has been impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt which twin is responsible. 'The police told us that they knew it was one of us, but we both denied it,' says James. 'I definitely know I didn't do anything wrong. I was watching my daughter that night.' Now the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has concluded that it cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt who was responsible. 'Unless further evidence becomes available, we are unable to authorize any charge at this time,' says CPS spokesman Rob Pett. 'This is certainly not something that we regularly encounter.' Identical twins have hindered police investigations a number of times since the advent of DNA testing. In Malaysia last year, a man suspected of drug-smuggling and sentenced to death was released when the court could not prove whether it was he or his twin brother who committed the crime."
Um, this is easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Um, this is easy (Score:4, Interesting)
And which one cut himself opening catfood. You don't go to prison for cutting yourself feeding your cat, right?
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You fail at reading comprehension. That was his whole point.
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"The assumption is that one of them has no cut..."
That's a ridiculous assumption. Cuts are ridiculously common.
Not to mention that your premise is flawed and dangerous. What if the guilty one got a nosebleed on the job? And the innocent one has a small papercut from a week or two ago on the job. Presence of a cut != Guilty in this case.
Re:Um, this is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, this is easy: bacterial forensics (Score:5, Interesting)
If the twins have not been living near-identical lives (sharing cars, apartments, etc), they probably have distinct bacterial colonies, and bacterial forensics (an emerging science) could be the key.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201003193 [sciencefriday.com]
This method cannot conclusively place an individual at the scene of the crime, but if combined with DNA evidence, I think you'd have a pretty air-tight case.
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Or one more note, an identical twin could leave a sample of his blood and blame his brother.
Wouldn't that have to be, on top of identical, a secret evil twin?
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It's been my experience that all identical twins are secretly evil. My brother and I had a discussion about this and, interestingly, he shares this view, so it must be true!
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Couldn't anyone leave anyone's blood?
Old days? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know dissing new technology and looking to the past with rose-tinted glasses is all the rage these days, but don't you think that if they had any other leads, they would've pursued them as well?
Besides, not only did the old methods catch only some criminals (so do the newer ones, but for higher values of 'some'), many of those they did catch ended up decades later to not have been criminals after all.
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Warm? That doesn't seem right...
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Hanging would work well in this case if the English still had the balls to do that sort of thing. Just declare them both to be guilty and that they'll both be hanged. When they're on the gibbet with their necks in a noose the guilty one would probably speak up to spare his brother, and if not just hang them both anyway.
If I were the innocent brother and placed in this situation with no other alternative, I'd gladly confess so that my brother could go free, even knowing (as only I would) that he was the guilty one. I'd be a two thousand years too late to claim that it's my original idea, though.
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If I were the innocent brother and placed in this situation with no other alternative, I'd gladly confess so that my brother could go free, even knowing (as only I would) that he was the guilty one. I'd be a two thousand years too late to claim that it's my original idea, though.
fuck that.
my twin is standing next to me at the gallows, guilty as sin, and refuses to admit his guilt in order to save me? he's an asshole and deserves the hanging even more than before.
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I'd gladly confess so that my brother could go free, even knowing (as only I would) that he was the guilty one. I'd be a two thousand years too late to claim that it's my original idea, though.
In that kind of a "justice" system, the goal isn't justice but retribution and a show of power. As long as someone gets hung for the crime it doesn't much matter if it was the right person or not. The state "got it's guy", so everyone is safe again.
We're not entirely immune to that today. This guy [wikipedia.org] was the 3rd pers
Just goes to show (Score:5, Insightful)
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...and don't forget potential for immunity of genetic chimeras (though certainly not when there's a sample of blood found on the crimescene, since that's what will also be teste)
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There were eyewitness accounts describing the suspect as a man in motion, also in need of a pair of wheels. This could only implicate John Parr.
The FBI doesn't want you to know (Score:3, Informative)
Blood at the Scene (Score:2)
I've never though that blood at the scene means you were at the scene, or that you did a crime that was committed at that location.
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You blood at the scene means you get to explain to the police how it got there. If your blood was in my kitchen, next to my wifes body, and there was evidence she fought her attacker, you don't think the police, having matched the mystery blood back to you, wouldn't want a quick word with you?
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Jesus. Please never be a juror.
The standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant making up "any old story", with no corroboration, to explain real evidence the prosecution presents is not enough to remove the doubt from the evidence.
I'd laugh if the defendant claimed "uhh, someone must have planted it by stealing blood from a fake donation event". The prosecution had presented evidence the defendant was unable to effectively refute.
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is not enough to remove the doubt from the evidence.
Well, in that case, the prosecution hasn't done their job yet, so why would the defense need to do anything?
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In a summer's crowd, how hard is it to collect a bit of blood from someone? From 10 people? All you need is something abrasive on your shoes and you can rub against someone "accidentally". For bonus points, pick up some hair from their shirt - it may even have skin flakes on it. If you're somewhere where everyone is in sufficient hurry and where everyone's packed in, like London's rush hour, there's probably too much adrenaline going around for them to notice they've received a very minor cut.
Now imagine ho
My retirement plan (Score:2)
Seriously, they might be able to do a serological comparison but I doubt that the technology is there yet.
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I always wondered how I could make a profit from having identical twin kids.
Well, I'm not sure about the Profit! step, but maybe you can use the Human Mirror idea ( http://improveverywhere.com/2008/07/06/human-mirror/ [improveverywhere.com] ) as a starting point.
The clone wars (Score:2)
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Given the amazingly poor security of many law enforcement and medical databases, wouldn't it be easier to simply swap the data with some innocent sucker?
Defeating Gattaca (Score:2)
So the solution to genetic privacy is for us all to clone ourselves!
Good thing we"ll have all those genegeneered crops to feed them clones.
That's not the real problem here (Score:3, Insightful)
...a man suspected of drug-smuggling and sentenced to death...
I'm surprised nobody has said anything about this. Sentenced to death for smuggling drugs? That's more of a problem than twin's getting away with theft and... well... drug smuggling.
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If I recall correctly, death sentences for drug smuggling are pretty common in the region.
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Network Effects. (Score:2)
Well, good. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the way it's supposed to work. DNA is not a magic bullet (heh) for solving crimes.
So the Crown will have to use good old fashioned police work to prove the case, like finding the watch in either twin's possession and/or fingerprints on the broken glass. Even genetic twins have different fingerprints. If the Crown (or any other prosecutorial system based upon English Common Law) cannot do this, then they go free, as per the design of the system.
It's better to let a hundred guilty go free than to jail (or execute!) one innocent person.
--
BMO
It was my evil twin! (Score:2)
Alternative (Score:2)
They BOTH did it.
Re:Alternative (Score:5, Funny)
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In fact I think there was a movie about that even.
This happened to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
... not as defendant, but as a juror.
I served on a jury last summer for a case of armed home invasion. The victim, if you can call him that, was a multiply-convicted white crack user. The victim claimed the defendant forced his way into the defendant's house with a gun, as part of a dispute over the defendant's missing cell phone following a drug deal.
The defense attorney's goal was to convince us that there was no way to determine beyond a reasonable doubt whether the defendant committed the crime, or his brother. The police did a horribly sloppy job of gathering evidence, the DNA was so contaminated that while it matched the victim, it also had good odds of matching the defendant's brother or about 1 in 5 random people off the street. The victim lied on the stand several times and showed no reliability as an eyewitness, and all the other evidence (phone calls, evidence collected at defendant's house) pointed to *some* member of the defendant's family, but no way to know who.
So we found him not guilty. Kind of a shame since the defendant probably *was* a drug dealer, but no way to prove it wasn't his brother. And the kicker: if they bring the brother to trial, he can use the same defense.
Yes, I've been waiting forever to use this: (Score:2)
When two people are on an elevator and one farts, they both know who did it.
Ooops!! I crapped my pants! (Score:2)
It's actually worse than that (Score:5, Informative)
DNA has been getting relied on heavily lately to solve otherwise cold cases. States have started running crime scene evidence through DNA databases wholesale, and then running with whatever match they get, even if it's just a partial.
Think about it: if there's a one in a million chance that the DNA will match, and you have a 20 million person database, then you're going to get 20 matches. Now just find the guy who's most convenient to prosecute. Boom, instant cold case conversion!
DNA's Dirty Little Secret: a forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.bobelian.html [washingtonmonthly.com]
Also:
New Rule Allows Use of Partial DNA Matches
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/nyregion/25dna.html [nytimes.com]
DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html [nytimes.com]
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Exactly, courts can bar evidence and approve your defense. With that, its hard to see how anyone gets a fair trial.
Oh wait, they dont. The federal government does this on all marijuana cases. You can be legal under state, so your permit to grow pot isnt allowed in court, your plea of innocent, isnt allowed in court.
Thats why people plea bargain, you cant defend yourself, might as well take the offer they give you, or face 25+ years to life.
The Kray brothers would have loved this (Score:2)
For folks that are familiar with Monty Python, the Piranha Brothers (fictional, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_Brothers [wikipedia.org] were inspired by the Krays (real, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kray_brothers [wikipedia.org]).
The Krays stayed out of prison for a long time by intimidating witnesses. DNA evidence cannot be intimidated, but given this case, one the brothers could commit a crime, without worrying about leaving DNA behind. Both would claim innocence. They could have called it the "Other Other Other Other Operat
That's nice, but... (Score:2)
When are the courts going to get it through their heads that it doesn't take identical twins to make DNA tests fallible and utterly unsuited as sole evidence?
The obvious solution... (tongue in cheek)... (Score:2)
Other differences in blood chemistry? (Score:2)
Surely, there are other tests using standard blood chemistry that could be performed? A standard annual blood test would test for a whole variety of things - glucose levels, hormone levels, antibody levels.
Wouldn't the brothers have different glucos levels, immune responses or ratios of antibodies?
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Glucos varies constantly, so unless one developed a condition like Diabetes it won't help. As for the rest, you'd still have to prove it's sufficient to identify a person. If it hasn't been used to do so in the past it is unlikely to pass muster in court.
Never mind that most of the differences would have degraded in the sample to meaningless crap, DNA is pretty hardy stuff.
should be 60 mutations between them (Score:2)
The 60 mutation number comes from a study reported a few weeks ago fully sequencing parents and an offspring.
Or maybe the police could do their jobs! (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of resorting to third-world tactics like that, maybe the police investigators could just do their jobs, investigate the crime scene, and find some less-ambigous evidence that conclusively points to one brother or the other. Oh, and that doesn't mean that they "manufacture" the evidence, either.
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It says in the story that they wouldn't prosecute without more than just DNA evidence. Really though, it limited their suspect pool to two people. One has a legitimate alibi. The other only has his word that he didn't do it.
This is the UK we're talking about. They have a camera on every street corner. They could review the footage, and effectively follow him from the crime scene back to his house. But gosh, that requires work, and it's easier to just get a confession from
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This is the UK we're talking about. They have a camera on every street corner.
Which may be true (no idea if it is), but I bet 95% of them are owned by private companies and not the government.
I'm sure it'd take a large amount of paperwork, and manpower to track all the tapes down for them (if they're even real cameras).
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Errr, no. I'm not British, but I've followed a number of stories regarding video surveillance of British citizens. GP may have exaggerated a little when he said "every street corner" - but not by much. The Brits are obssessed with observing every interaction between every pair of people in their country. If they aren't "Orwellian" yet, they will be within a couple years.
One story about surveillance mentioned that CPS and/or the schools were considering putting cameras within the homes of "children at ri
Re:Or maybe the police could do their jobs! (Score:4, Informative)
This is the UK we're talking about. They have a camera on every street corner.
Since when? If it was outside the central business district of a major city, the chances are there wasn't a CCTV camera within a couple of miles radius.
The whole "Britain has elventy bajillion CCTV cameras" was a story *entirely made up* by a right-wing tabloid. The figure was derived by counting up all the council- and privately-owned CCTV cameras in a half-mile stretch of the main street of a particularly nasty area of London, and multiplying by the total length of all the roads in Britain. For it to be even *nearly* right, there would have to be a camera every 50 metres or so along *every* road. The track to my house would have three cameras all to itself...
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It's much like religion. You don't have to see the cameras to know that they're there. You just have to have faith that Big Brother is watching over you.
There's more evidence that the government and government owned cameras exist, than God exists. I don't know people would have any trouble believing in it.
[/sarcasm]
Really though, even here in America if you are attentive, you'll see that major intersections and other public areas have government
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Another possibility would be to examine both people's alibi.
Trying to hold 2 people for 1 peron's crime is just lazy.
Presumably one of them can't properly account for their whereabouts at the time of the crime. One of their alibis' has got to have a hole in it (unless a 'third' mysterious twin did it)
At least one twin is lying, and possibly a friend covering their alibi is lying. They couldn't have both really been watching their daughter that night.
Unless one of them that committed the crime took
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In theory, yes. In practice, crime labs are overloaded anyways, so spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on a 10,000 pound robbery doesn't make all that much sense, especially if the labs could use the time to work on unsolved homicides.
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Keep in mind that not having an alibi isn't necessarily sufficient to constitute proof beyond reasonable doubt, especially when any eye-witness or CCTV evidence could apply equally to both twins.
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"Proof beyond reasonable doubt" is required to convict, not to prove one innocent. Innocent until proven guilty still applies - unless you are being sued for copyright infringement, of course. You have it backwards.
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I assume the police actually did both nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing on both twins, and other analysis of blood content?
Why do mitochondrial DNA testing? The twins would share that DNA too, doesn't make much sense to test it, right?
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"Even identical twins don't necessarily eat the same things."
Dude - this is BRITAIN! Everyone eats fish & chips and meat pies. Kidney pies on Sundays, I think. If you're looking for a difference in diet, check their favorite brands of ale or laager. That might show up if anyone took note of body odor. Cheap drink smells bad forever!
Geez!
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1. What's your favorite hobby?
a. Watching TV with my family
b. Curling up with a good book
c. Twirling my moustache while laughing
2. If you were to volunteer at an orphanage, what would you feed the orphans?
a. I would feed them candy
b. I would feed them something healthy
c. I would feed them to alligators
3. Describe your romantic relationship
a. I just met a girl who has learned to trust and rely on me
b. I went home and became a family m
Fuck that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I couldn't tell you what he's doing right now. He could be robbing a jewelry store for all I know.
Hey! No I'm not!
Re:Fuck that! (Score:4, Funny)
well, he knows you're not, but he's trying to pin it on you now while he's at the jewelry store.
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They could try to figure out which one recently became richer (or has a friend who recently became richer), or which one rented a storage location in which to store the stolen goods, or any of a bazillion other types of normal evidence they could attempt to locate.
You know, the kind of stuff they would have tried to figure out back before DNA evidence was ever used.
Just an idea.
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Did anyone think to search their persons for any cuts that might be healing? One twin or the other left blood on some broken glass? How did the blood get there, unless he cut himself?
I guess that if it took months to match the twins to the blood, then the cuts are healed - but crap! Did anyone think to LOOK?
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Just a thought, of course
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IANAL, but I'm pretty sure possession of stolen goods isn't circumstantial evidence ;)
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They could try to figure out which one recently became richer (or has a friend who recently became richer),
I'll bet the £10K is full retail value not criminal fence value. A few grand of cash can't be that difficult to hide and depending on how valuable each watch was i'm guessing the watches themselves weren't hard to hide either.
Sherlock homes said... (Score:2)
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Locking two people away until one of then confesses is "third world". but really, it's totalitarian, not third world.
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Re:Obvious Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Guilty until proven innocent?
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Obviously the one who confesses is the good twin, so you should immediately arrest the other.
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Isolate them, and ask each one who the other says is guilty.
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Isolate them, and ask each one who the other says is guilty.
If they both actually believe themselves to be innocent, then neither will have admitted anything to the other, and possibly both will blame the other, since no matter now much they 'cant believe he would do that', they would be sure they didn't.
On the other hand, if one IS guilty and this is a ploy to avoid an arrest, then both will know that one does not have to answer that question at all, let alone truthfully.
They would both have agreed to say
Re:Obvious Solution (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, neither will confess, and neither one did it. As it turns out they were actually triplets when they were born. The parents had to give one up for adoption. The adopted brother, through cruel twists of fate, turned to crime at a young age. Neither of the "twins" know anything about the third brother.
But, that's not the whole story. The third brother married into a well connected crime family. He did what the family wanted, but that still didn't make them satisfied with him. In time, there was resentment by some of the "family" members, and even his wife.
The wife was having an affair with another member of the crime family. One morning the third brother cut himself shaving. She took that blood, and gave it to her lover, and *HE* is the one who committed the crime.
No one in the crime family, nor even the third brother, knew there were two more people who would positively identify to the DNA match. The third brother remains unsuspected to this day, and those in his circle continue to live free, until the day that his wife finally gets rid of him, one way or another.
{sigh} don't you people ever watch murder/mystery/detective shows? Hell, even an educated background of Scooby Doo mysteries would have thought of this one. Or the old man who lived in the cabin on the hill. :)
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So obvious it's been (mostly) done before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Twin [wikipedia.org]
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It can be argued it was done in Metal Gear Solid, too.
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Funny, I haven't read that book, nor seen the movie. I just made it up. :) I guess Duell was right, "Everything that can be invented, has already been invented".
You joke but... (Score:3, Informative)
I know you're joking, but ....
As it turns out they were actually triplets when they were born.
In fact finding a "hidden" 3rd person with the same profile isn't that much impossible.
Given the small amount of tested loci finding a perfect match doesn't even require a true twin brother or triplet, but could also be someone different, who just had the bad luck to have the same DNA only on the dozen of tested loci (and could have different DNA elsewhere).
The wikipedia entry about DNA profiling [wikipedia.org] mentions a case of a "perfect" random match of 13 loci among 30'000 persons.
In sho
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I went reading up on it, beyond Wikipedia. :) Most of it was stating the statistical impossibility of DNA matches. They were all forensic reports used by the police, so it's in their best interest to say it. Come court time, forensic reports will outweigh Wikipedia.
I do recall reading in the past that "identical" twins do have different DNA. Sure a sample of a few markers may show an identical result, but if they did better tests with more markers, they could easily determi
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It's called unlawful arrest. It's not legal to hold someone in contempt of court who is not a witness.
It is unconstitutional (5th amendment violation) to demand someone confess.
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While I'm not really familiar with the justice system in the UK, I'd have a hard time believing that the US constitution somehow applies there.
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The same basic right exists in the UK, they call it the right to silence, or the right to remain silent, and it comes from the Judges' Rules, and pertains to rights of the defendant to not testify, and rights to not cooperate with police.
Arguably, potential criminals may have better rights there than in the US, in certain areas.
The 5th amendment of the US constitution is based on it.
But see the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 [wikipedia.org], PACE Code C.
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Re:Obvious Solution (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's way easier than that. All you have to do is analyse their DNA, and see which of them has the Evil Bit set. I can't believe this hasn't been done yet.
ps. The evil bit in DNA is not detected by normal comparisons. You need to find a geneticist with 1337 DN4 5C4NN1NG 5K1LLZ. The median age for such geneticists is 13, interestingly.
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While we are at it, what happened to the good old "float or drown" technique of evil bit detection.
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They will be forced to pay the bullet fee twice.
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They didn't even do thorough DNA testing. There *ARE* DNA differences between identical twins. Certain sequences aren't stable, and either stretch or shrink with each cell division, to the point that by the time one is "adult" (before 12 years) it's possible to tell the difference between identical twins. But you need to be a lot more thorough than just testing at 12 sites (or whatever they use this year).
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What is with all these nonsensical comments implying that the police in this case haven't done any investigative work beyond DNA testing? Traditional investigative techniques didn't magically solve every case, plenty of times nothing of value could be found. Obviously investigators looked at the scene of the crime and the only clue they found was a blood sample, so what more do you think your old-time gumshoe can do with that?
I imagine a microscopic particle of glass embedded somewhere in two people's combi