AUSTIN – Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said Wednesday hundreds of DNA samples may need retesting, citing new guidelines on how DNA should be analyzed.
The issue with DNA testing is not limited to Texas or Travis County, but affects law enforcement agencies across the country.
The new guidelines might have an impact on how scientists calculate the chances a suspect's DNA is at a crime scene. The regulations could change the chances in some cases, but Travis County officials said they do not know the number of local cases that could be effected.
Officials also said that these methods could have led to discrepancies, but officials also said they are confident overall in DNA results.
The Texas Commission on Forensic Science also is dealing with this issue, stating in an August bulletin that some local law enforcement had requested a review of the DNA results in some pending cases.
According to the commission, those recalculations had little impact on the final result.
Lehmberg also said in her release she and other prosecutors are working to find cases where DNA may need retesting, and that it "is expected to be a large undertaking."
