TheAgitator.com
Prosecutor Unimpressed by Fancy Schmancy DNA Tests; Sticking With Hunches
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008Michael Mermel, chief of the criminal division for the Lake County, Illinois state’s attorney’s office, is rather unimpressed by the value of exonerating DNA evidence, especially when it conflicts with good ol’ eyewitness testimony, confessions, even bite-mark evidence.
For example, six years ago, Mermel dismissed DNA tests showing that the semen found in the underwear of a 68-year rape victim didn’t belong to the man convicted of the crime. Bernie starks had been serving time for the rape since 1986. Now if the DNA had come from the woman’s vagina, Mermel argued at the time, “I would be standing over there advocating the side that the defense has in the case.”
Actually, no he wouldn’t. Three years later, a missing rape kit from the case turned up. It included a vaginal swab containing semen, and a DNA test on the semen again excluded the man convicted of the crime. Mermel again refused to concede, this time arguing that the woman must have had consensual sex with another man at about the same time of the rape.
When DNA testing on an 11-year-old rape and murder victim excluded his suspect, Mermel said the more likely explanation there too was that the girl had been sexually active—not that he could possibly be charging the wrong guy.
But this one beats all:
And, just recently, when lawyers for the man charged in the killing of his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend said in court that DNA evidence from semen excluded him as the perpetrator, the Lake prosecutor had another explanation.
Mermel said DNA may have gotten inside the 8-year-old’s body as she played in the woods at what became the crime scene—a place where Mermel said some couples go to have sex. The girl was found fully clothed.
That’s some mighty potent semen.
A truly astounding level of corruption because nobody could possibly be that stupid.
@#1: Oh, I beg to differ. Are you familiar with the average intelligence of prosecutors? This guy is just an idiot. He reminds me of a guy I knew in college who had a Johnny Cochrane impersonation: “What’s DNA? It’s three letters, Do Not Acquit.” Of course, that case was totally backwards from this one.
I’ll bet the same guy believes in the infalliblity of alcohol breath and drug tests.The only eivdence that counts is that which convicts.
What an ass.
No, that’s sentient semen with the power of teleportation.
So semen can just pack up, travel anywhere and burst through clothes once its been discharged. Considering that I lived on 3 continents, I think I may have kids all over the place then.
When I first read the headline for this post, I thought it was an article from the Onion.
So, do prosecutors get disbarred when then this stuff happens? Someone, please educate me in rules and guidelines that will get a DA fired or put in jail.
How can this guy sleep at night?? answer: 2 tiered system – 1 for sex offenders, another for everybody else. As they said in Salem 400 years ago- “I know she’s a witch!” In the U.S. today it’s “he’s a sex offender”! Another way to look at it is “an arrest equals guilt.” That makes it nice and easy for everybody (except the accused). And no one should think this problem is unique to this DA in this county…
Of course, the other side of the coin is that this prosecutor won’t be able to claim any more that the presence of a defendant’s DNA in a rape victim’s vagina proves the defendant’s guilt. Could have migrated in from the environment, y’know.
Wonder how that’ll work out?
Science is just a bunch of conjured magic anyway! These are the kinds of guys that indict teachers of exposing the kids to porn, even when scientific evidence shows that the computer was infected with malware… not that that would ever happen…
there’s gotta be banjo music playing when you pull into his jurisdiction. the juries must be picked from a pool of inbred, lead-poisoned, glue-sniffing Springer rejects. there’s no way Mermel could win a case with his reasoning, unless he was talking to ‘his’ people.
more evidence of govt pulling the best and brightest out of the private sector!
While putting leaches on my skin for a case of scurvy, my doctor told me two things: DNA testing is a scam and if you sail far enough you’ll fall off the edge of the earth. I then paid him in possum jerky–best in the parish!
“That’s some mighty potent semen.”
That’s what she said! Hey-yo!!
Oh, and this guy Mermel should get a swift kick in the nuts from the innocent men he insists on putting in jail so that, whatever we want to say about the power and agility of semen, we know that not one drop of it on this earth belongs to this effin f!@#stick.
(Sorry for the eff-bombs, but I watched Shawshank again last night – what awesome cursing!)
Oh and if yuo read to the end of the main article you find this:
“Public defenders in the case said in court that DNA from semen from oral, rectal and vaginal swabs of Laura [a child] produced a profile that did not match Hobbs’ [defendant's] DNA.
[snip]
Mermel disagrees with the contention by Hobbs’ attorneys that the DNA is evidence that someone else attacked the girl.
“It is such a goofy logic leap [that] because somewhere in her life she came into contact with a sperm cell it means she was sexually assaulted,” Mermel said. “To take this leap that this is the identity of the mystery killer, I don’t know where everybody gets this idea.”" (emphasis mine, btw).
That is the most breathtaking example of intellectual dishonesty I can remember ever encountering. Can we get a “hackwatch” going on this guy?
With this type of behavior you can be there will be many more innocent people in jails. I guess they can keep the non-violent drug offenders company!
As a curiosity, how exactly is the Lake County PD rounding up these suspects? Just picking up the nearest man to the crime scene and calling it a day?
Nick T says:
“That is the most breathtaking example of intellectual dishonesty I can remember ever encountering. Can we get a “hackwatch” going on this guy?”
Well, what do you expect? He beat a confession out of that guy fair and square!
… excerpt from http://blog.law.northwestern.edu/bluhm/2008/11/dna-test-results-suggest-that-jerry-hobbss-confession-is-false.html
“Hobbs was taken into police custody at 10:00a.m. on May 9, 2005 and interrogated for at least 16 hours until police claim he confessed at 4:45 a.m. on May 10th. Hobbs had not slept the night before (he was out searching for his daughter) and did not sleep once in custody. While in custody, he was subject to the full battery of psychological techniques by teams of detectives in a tag team fashion. Hobbs’s interrogation was not recorded (a new law requiring recording had passed in 2002 but would not become effective for a month or so), although police did prepare a typed statement which Hobbs signed.”
ANY cop who thinks that working a confession out of someone like this is ‘good police work’ should be kicked in the nuts until they confess.
The real morons are the people who keep electing this clown to his office.
Wow…that’s a prosecutor who needs to be in prison, not putting other people there.
“My rhymes are so potent that in the small segment, I made all of the ladies in the first two rows pregnant.”
Some prosecutors are just evil. That all there is to it.
When prosecutors make such assinine statements it should be the judge saying in open court “What the fuck is wrong with you? Maybe you are that stupid but do you expect this court to be?”
The fact that they don’t just shows how systemic the problem is.
Hey, that’s exactly how my wife became pregnant with our Asian daughter!
Defending his office’s approach, Mermel said Lake prosecutors believe in DNA “when it is forensically significant.”
Translation: when it helps the prosecution instead of the defense.
I’m growing very concerned that my home state is about to get its own icon on Fark. And one of our senators is about to be President. Eeek.
Profound, idiotic ignorance. I remember there was widespread ignorance about DNA evidence at the time of the OJ trial, but you’d think that by now, at least educated people would know better.
Maybe she sat on a public toilet, or swam in a public pool!
Or maybe Mermel, like most prosecutors, is a piece of human filth (see also “Nancy Grace”) who’d deliberately and knowingly steal someone’s life to protect his conviction record.
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