Malcolm Bryant: Exonerated by DNA On the evening of November 20, 1998, 17-year-old Tyeisha Powell and 16-year-old Toni Bullock were confronted by a man carrying a knife. They were dragged into a vacant lot in Baltimore, Maryland and Bullock was stabbed to death. Powell managed to escape and later gave police a description of her attacker. She only saw him briefly and other factors such as poor visibility in the rain and evening made it hard for her to give an adequate description. A week later with no leads, police receive a phone call from members of the victim’s family saying a man resembling the sketch was just released from jail. Bryant was picked up and immediately put in a photo lineup where Powell identified him as the attacker. Bryant was charged with first-degree murder, even though witnesses placed him at a nightclub at the time of the crime. Bryant was sentenced to life in prison in 1999. Over the years, Bryant filed motions only to be dismissed and until 2009, ...
DNA Comparison There’s always that one scene in crime show thrillers—the one where the the lab technician in a white lab coat nails the killer by extracting or finding the smallest amount of evidence through DNA. Blockbusters also seem to do the same thing. The witty, nerdy, and attractive lab tech turns around evidence in a short matter of time and the there’s almost always a happy ending. Crime > Investigation > Trial. The story line remains relatively the same. Seems quite simple on the big screen, but in fact these types of scenarios Hollywood perpetuates for their audience actually causes more problems than solutions. DNA evidence is often not found in most cases and without DNA, most jurors are hung because they lack this “gold standard” of evidence they see quite often on television. DNA also puts away innocent individuals and costs people their livelihoods. DNA has become the golden standard of all forensic sciences in the twentieth century but even sci...