Cases are not built entirely on DNA. Your case falls apart because you are assuming the victim has the same size clothes as you.
also, there is no death penalty there under most laws because there are no aggravating circumstances.
Uh here is one built SOLELY on DNA.
East Side Rapist, Known Solely by DNA, Is IndictedBy JULIAN E. BARNES
Published: Thursday, March 16, 2000
With a series of genetic markers as their evidence, Manhattan prosecutors announced the indictment yesterday of the man known as the East Side rapist, even though investigators still do not know who he is.
The indictment, one of the few instances in the country that a DNA signature alone has been used to charge a crime, will prevent the statute of limitations from expiring in three of the seven rapes the man is suspected of committing between 1994 and 1998. The grand jury charged him just four days before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired on the earliest attack cited in the indictment, said Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney.
Police Commissioner Howard Safir said he believed that the East Side rapist was still at large.
''We think this is an innovative and creative way of holding those accountable for their actions,'' Mr. Safir said. ''With DNA technology we can convict someone today, tomorrow or 10 years from now.''
In October, prosecutors in Milwaukee announced that they had filed charges in a series of three rapes against a man known only by his DNA code. There has been at least one other such warrant based on DNA evidence, in a 1991 case in Kansas. No one has been apprehended in either case.
Prosecutors and legal experts predicted that the number of indictments based solely on DNA evidence would increase rapidly in coming years.
''This is a very new, very creative kind of prosecution,'' said Linda Fairstein, the chief of the Manhattan district attorney's sex crimes unit.
Lawrence Kobilinsky, a professor of forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that indicting a person known solely by DNA sequence was more precise than indicting a person known only by name.
''If you have someone with the name John Smith, there are probably thousands of people,'' Mr. Kobilinsky said. ''A genetic profile is a much better way to identify a single person.''
The East Side rapist attacked all but one of his victims between 64th and 91st Streets, west of Lexington Avenue after 2 a.m., the police said. He would typically follow a lone woman and slip into the lobby of her building before the door closed, said Lt. Thomas P. Carney, the commander of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit.
Lieutenant Carney said DNA evidence has eliminated two suspects in the attacks over the last year. One man who police followed last year matched the physical description of the suspect, frequented the same area and seemed to have difficultly dealing with women. But when officers tested two samples of his DNA, collected surreptitiously, the man was exonerated, Lieutenant Carney said.
The probability that a person other than the attacker has a DNA profile matching the one in the Manhattan indictment is 1 in 240 billion, Mr. Morgenthau said.
The rapist last struck a year and half ago, and some investigators think that he has left New York City. But police officers said the indictment ensures that their work will not go to waste if the rapist is eventually identified by name.
''From our standpoint, we have been working on this for three and a half years, we have done an enormous amount of work,'' Lieutenant Carney said. ''If the statute of limitations had passed, that would have been very disheartening.''
The statute of limitations has run out on 2 of the 16 attacks attributed to the East Side rapist, police officials said. The two attacks following those, on March 19 and Aug. 17, 1995, were included in yesterday's indictment, along with an rape on April 6, 1997.
Mr. Morgenthau said DNA evidence was recovered in a fourth attack linked to the East Side rapist and added that an indictment in that case was expected. Although DNA evidence does not exist in the other attacks, police have linked them to the same man by the description of the attacker and details on how he assaulted his victims, Lieutenant Carney said.
The victim of the Aug. 17 attack said in an interview last month that she was worried the statute of limitations would run out before her attacker was arrested. ''As far as I'm concerned, there should not be a time limit to prosecute these cases,'' she said.
Last month, Gov. George E. Pataki proposed eliminating the statute of limitations on rape and eight other types of crimes. Rape victim advocates and law enforcement officials urged removing the limitations in crimes in which DNA evidence can be used in prosecution years after a crime occurred.
But Susan Hendricks, deputy attorney in charge for the criminal defense division of the Legal Aid Society, expressed concern over the use of such indictments to circumvent statutes of limitations. As time passes, other evidence that could exonerate a suspect might disappear, said Ms. Hendricks, who contended that DNA evidence is not foolproof.
''The more time that passes, the more troubling this strategy is, because the more potential witnesses have been lost,'' she said. There are about 12,000 New York City rape cases in which the evidence has not been examined for a DNA signature. Mr. Morgenthau said his prosecutors and investigators were combing through old rape cases, looking for assaults that match a pattern, then conducting tests on DNA samples taken from the evidence. Cases that follow a pattern would be the first additional John Doe indictments made, he said. Mr. Morgenthau added that he had also asked state and city officials for an additional $500,000 to create a cold case squad for rape cases.
''We are going through them, trying to find patterns,'' Mr. Morgenthau said. ''We are starting to do it, but we need more funding.''
