False But Highly Persuasive : How Wrong Were the Probability Estimates in McDaniel v. Brown?

In McDaniel v. Brown, the Supreme Court will review the use of DNA evidence in a 1994 trial for sexual assault and attempted murder. The Court granted certiorari to consider two procedural issues—the standard of federal postconviction review of a state jury verdict for sufficiency of the evidence, and the district court\u27s decision to allow the prisoner to supplement the record of trials, appeals, and state postconviction proceedings with a geneticist\u27s letter twelve years after the trial. The letter from Laurence Mueller, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, identified two obvious mistakes in the state\u27s expert testimony. This essay clarifies the nature and extent of the errors in this evidence in Brown. One might think that the expert\u27s letter, the opinions of the lower courts, and the briefs—including one from 20 Scholars of Forensic Evidence —would have done this, but there is more to be said