Last nighttime , Law & Order : SVUdid that “ rive from the headlines ” matter where they borrow elements of real - world criminal vitrine or address current issues in law enforcement . The instalment , “ Double Strands , ” revolved around a topic I ’ve been reading a lot about lately : twin .
[ Spoilers Ahead ! ]
The patch involves a consecutive rapist and his selfsame twin comrade , who is incorrectly impeach of the criminal offence . The SVU detectives eventually enter things out , but real - world police have had a lot of problem with monovular Gemini in several high - profile cases . DNA evidence — a tool that ’s reckon to help convict the guilty and exculpate the destitute accurately and expeditiously — has complicated cases where a Twin Falls or twins have been regard . This is because selfsame Gemini the Twins are the outcome of a single fertilized bollock that formed one fertilized ovum , which then divided into two separate embryos . The siblings have nearly monovular desoxyribonucleic acid , and we ’ve yet to figure out how to discern one twin from the other using deoxyribonucleic acid analytic thinking .
[ End Spoilers ]
The Headlines From Which The Story Was Ripped
One summertime night in 2001 , Darrin Fernandez attempted to go against into an apartment in Boston ’s Dorchester neighborhood . When he smashed a windowpane to get inside , he not only alarm the individual who lived in the flat , but also cut himself deeply on the jagged glass . He flee , and police presently found him , still bleeding , as he tried to escape .
When the police analyzed DNA from the broken meth and from Fernandez , they obtain that he was a match for genetic material recovered in two unresolved intimate assaults display case , both of which were committed within a few blocks of the flat Fernandez had strain to break into .
Fernandez was convicted of set about breaking and entering at the flat . He was also finally convict of one of the intimate Assault , for which there was batch of evidence that implicate him , include the dupe discover a tattoo that his brother did not have ( in theSVUepisode , both Gemini the Twins have a similar tattoo in the same place ) . The police and prosecutor could not confidently put the second rape on him , though . The DNA lucifer was the only substantial evidence that they had to go on , and it turn out that it also fit a second mortal : Fernandez ’s identical duplicate brother , Damien .
There were no witnesses to the assault , no accomplices to roll , and no fingerprint at the view . Darrin did n’t have an exculpation to cover the time of the assault , but neither did Damien . The police force could n’t grade either brother at the setting of the criminal offence and the deoxyribonucleic acid that damned Darrin in another trial had only established sensible dubiousness in this one . The case give way to trial anyway and after four days of deliberation , there was a hung jury and a mistrial . In a 2d visitation several months later , the pursuance ’s case rested heavily on the fact that Darrin worked as a painter near where the assault occur , and he had the chance to case the neighborhood . Again , the panel was advert and a mistrial was declare .
In 2006 Fernandez went to trial run a third time , and prosecutors were allowed to salute for the first metre evidence that he had committed four break - ins in the victim ’s region within a year ( and had been convicted of a similar sexual violation in one of those instances ) . The dupe of that assault , who had not testified at the former two trials , also took the stand this time around to highlight the similarities her attack shared with this font .
The jury returned a guilty verdict and , five years after his initial stop , Darrin Fernandez was sentenced to 15 to 20 long time on top of 10 to 15 year sentence he was already serving for the first assault .
constabulary and prosecutors in Grand Rapids , Michigan , may have had it even worse . In 1999 , represent with DNA evidence in the Brassica napus of a college student , they could n’t work out out which of their twin suspects to even charge with the offense .
Like the Fernandez cases , there were no witnesses and no fingerprints . To complicate thing , the suspects in this case , Tyrone and Jerome Cooper , both had phonograph recording for intimate assault ( Tyrone assaulted a 10 - year - older lady friend in 1991 and Jerome a 12 - twelvemonth - old daughter in 1998 ) .
After hiring a bioengineering company to fit some 100,000 DNA characteristics to match one twin or the other to the recovered grounds , the police fall up empty . They could only tell both twins that the caseful would be not be forgotten and would get work until the statute of limitations prevented criminal prosecution . * * * Gemini the Twins make the justness system work even harder when they ’re seize to each other , literally . If a conjoined twin commits , and is convict of , a crime , how do you punish them without also unjustly punishing their innocent sibling ? Slate’sDaniel Engberand legal scholarNick Kamhave both take care at the available historic cases and suggest possible solutions to the problem .
