The Expanding Use of DNA in Law Enforcement: What Role for Privacy?

DNA identification is being used in ever-widening ways, including databases of greater scope, familial and lowstringency searches, and DNA dragnets. After examining the law enforcement and privacy interests, the article concludes that forensic DNA uses must be consistent with privacy and civil liberties.     

Computer-Animated Displays and the Jury: Facilitative and Prejudicial Effects

Two experiments assessed the effects of computer-animated displays on mock jurors. In both, participants watched a trial involving a dispute over whether a man who fell to his death had accidentally slipped or jumped in a suicide. They watched a proplaintiff or prodefendant version in which the body landed 5–10 feet or 20–25 feet from the building. Within each condition, the distance testimony was presented orally or with an animated display. When the tape depicted the event in a neutral manner, judgments were more consistent with the physical evidence. But when the plaintiff and defense used the tape to depict their own partisan theories, participants increasingly made judgments that contradicted the physical evidence. Results suggest that computer-animated displays have greater impact than oral testimony. Whether that impact is to facilitate or mislead a jury, however, depends on the nature of the display.     

Whose business is your pancreas? Potential privacy problems in New York City's mandatory diabetes registry

This article examines a recent New York City health regulation that mandates the compilation and storage of individual medical data from nearly all diabetics in a centralized registry. The authors distinguish this novel registry from prior health registries and scrutinize its potential to compromise individual privacy. In order to address privacy and other concerns, the authors offer suggestions for changes to the current statutory framework of the registry that will also be useful when considering the creation of similar public health registries in other cities.     

Identification of the veterinary sedative medetomidine in combination with opioids and xylazine in Maryland

Public health, public safety, and forensic science personnel continue to face the emergence of new compounds into the drug market. While focus is often put on the detection of new analogs of known illicit drugs, monitoring the changes in cutting agents and other compounds can be equally as important. Over the last year, near real-time monitoring of the drug supply in Maryland has been completed through a public health–public safety partnership whereby residue from suspected drug packaging or used paraphernalia is collected and analyzed. Through this project, we have recently detected the presence of the veterinary sedative medetomidine in a small number of samples. The presence of medetomidine has been identified in both public health and law enforcement samples and in the presence of fentanyl and xylazine—another veterinary sedative that has been widely observed over the last year. While the rate at which medetomidine has been detected remains low, it is concerning and worthy of continued monitoring.