Justice and Science: Trials and Triumphs of DNA Evidence - Hardcover

Clarke, George

9780813541921: Justice and Science: Trials and Triumphs of DNA Evidence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813541921 ISBN 13: 9780813541921

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2008

George "Woody" Clarke has been renowned for years in legal circles and among the news media because of his expertise in DNA evidence. In this memoir, Clarke chronicles his experiences in some of the most disturbing and notorious sexual assault and murder court cases in California. He charts the beginnings of DNA testing in police investigations and the fight for its acceptance by courts and juries. He illustrates the power of science in cases he personally prosecuted or in which he assisted, including his work with the prosecution team in the trial of O.J. Simpson.Although Clarke spent much of his career as a prosecutor, he also covers cases where DNA evidence was used to exonerate. He directed a special project, proactively examining over six hundred cases of defendants convicted and sentenced to prison before 1993, with the goal of finding instances in which DNA typing might add new evidence and then offered testing to those inmates.Databases of both convicted offenders and no-suspect cases demonstrate the power of DNA testing to solve the unsolvable. As Clarke tells the story of how he came to understand and use this new form of evidence, readers will develop a new appreciation for the role of science in the legal system.

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Review:

"From his work as part of the prosecution in the 1995 O. J. Simpson murder trial to his star billing on TV's America's Most Wanted, former San Diego prosecutor George "Woody" Clarke has been party to some of the justice system's most visible, controversial, and melodramatic moments. He puts that populist knack to work in this nonfiction page turner that should appeal just as much to true crime buffs as those concerned with the workings of the criminal justice system.... Full of suspenseful true-crime accounts tracing the capture and conviction of murderers and rapists, as well as the successful exoneration of the wrongly convicted, this title has real best-seller potential." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Clarke's account of the rise of DNA evidence is engaging and well paced, and the author comes across as likable and genuinely humble - a rarity in a book of war stories." - San Francisco Chronicle "As a former prosecutor who specialized in DNA evidence, Woody Clarke has the ability to make the difficult science that sometimes confuses a jury understandable to his reader." - Dominick Dunne, author of Justice: Crimes, Trials and Punishments"

About the Author:

George "Woody" Clarke served as a prosecutor in the San Diego district attorney's office from 1982 to 2003. He has appeared frequently on national television, he has co-starred on America's Most Wanted with host John Walsh, and he lectures internationally on forensic DNA evidence. For the past three years he has been a judge of the Superior Court in San Diego County.

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