Court allows racial group profiles
for DNA evidence

By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service

July 6, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - The California Supreme Court, ruling in a Solano County murder case, said today that prosecutors can use profile frequency statistics for different racial groups when presenting DNA evidence.

The court upheld the murder conviction of William Wilson, 25, for strangling 13-year-old Sarah Phillips with a telephone cord in her Vacaville home on April 6, 2000. The decision was issued in San Francisco.

Wilson was convicted in Solano County Superior Court of first degree murder with the use of dangerous weapon during an attempted rape. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

During the trial, a prosecution expert testified about a DNA comparison of blood found at the crime scene, which showed a match with Wilson's genetic profile.

The expert, Nicola Shea of the California Department of Justice, said the match would be expected to occur in one in 96 billion Caucasians, one of 180 billion Hispanics and one of 340 billion African Americans.

She described the profile as extremely rare since the world population is less than 7 billion people. Scientists maintain DNA databases for different population groups because the odds of a match vary for each group.

Shea said she gave the statistics for the three different racial groups to avoid making assumptions about the ethnic background of the perpetrator.

Wilson, who is African American, argued in his appeal that the racially differentiated statistics should not have been allowed in court because there was no evidence about the race of the girl's killer.

But the high court said unanimously that testimony about the range of racial frequencies can be used so long as the information is not presented in a manner that assumes the perpetrator is from a certain race.

Justice Ming Chin, quoting a 2004 appeals court ruling in the case, wrote, "When the perpetrator's race is unknown, the frequencies with which the match profile occurs in various racial groups to which the perpetrator might belong are relevant for the purpose of ascertaining the rarity of the profile."

The panel said the three groups mentioned by Shea were appropriate because those were the largest population groups in Solano County. The panel said a defendant would have the right to present evidence about statistics for other population groups if he wished.

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