And the Blood Cried Out: A Prosecutor's Spellbinding Account of the Power of DNA

With admirable objectivity and fair-mindedness, Levy, a New York City lawyer and former assistant DA, examines the history of DNA in the courtroom and shows how evidence based on it has prevailed in the face of various assaults. He begins with a famous New York City case (that of the Central Park jogger who was raped by a gang of teenagers), which, intriguingly enough, did not involve DNA evidence, and goes on to a Maryland rape case in which the victim misidentified her attacker but DNA found the real rapist. New York's Stuyvesant Town rapist and an Austrian serial killer who committed three of his 11 murders in the U.S. were two more cases solved by DNA. Levy also cites several overturned convictions, one more than a decade old, in which DNA was critical. In his culminating chapter, on the O.J. Simpson case, the blood evidence was incontrovertible and never questioned by the lawyers, but the government was put on trial for allegedly sloppy testing and police bias. The conclusion of this riveting study: DNA is here to stay, and the creation in most states of DNA data banks to hold designated convicts' profiles proves it. (Aug.)