Will DNA testing eventually tell us what an unknown suspect looks like in a criminal case?
Friday, August 28th, 2009 at
8:18 pm
It's not unusual for unknown suspects to leave behind DNA evidence at crime scenes. Often it takes years for the DNA to be linked to a particular person, and it's often because the suspect in question has had encounters with the authorities in other cases and has submitted DNA samples. Will DNA testing eventually enable us to tell what the carrier of the DNA looks like, even if we can't put a name with the DNA?
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Tagged with: authorities • crime scenes • dna evidence • dna samples • dna testing
Filed under: DNA Testing Discussions
In some police cases it already does. Especially if they already have pictures of a suspect the DNA belongs too. I feel getting a picture will be hard from the evidence itself. Who knows years from now it may be a lot easier.
I don’t think so. How could you link someone’s DNA with their physical appearance. You might be able to get some other clues though, like what kind of diseases they are prone to.
Mostly, but if you had 2 people that looked "mostly alike", you wouldn’t be able to tell the differance. The dna would only be able to tell what they probably look like.
I think DNA analysis will advance to the point of drawing a very accurate picture of the guy that happened to be walking his dog when the murder took place- so it should be every bit as valuable as the way we currently use DNA tests in the courtroom.
Right now the DNA evidence can be used to determine whether the suspect looks like a woman (X-X chromosome) or a man (X-Y chromosomes). At present only stem cells can be used to clone a person but in the future if differentiated cells could be cloned the evidence could be used to obtain an ‘identical’ twin except, for the age gap. Few people look like their baby pictures. Although there is no statue of limitations for murder, it is unlikely that criminals would be cloned from the evidence. Also, there should be ethical questions about cloning only a face.