[svlug] Reiser's Wife's Ex-Lover Killed 8! Plus Question Re Evidence

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Mark S Bilk (mark at cosmicpenguin.com):

> Of course one way is planting the drops....

As is often the case in press reports from criminal trials -- and doubly
so in press reports from preliminary hearings -- the degree of
confidence laboratories could arrive at from blood testing went
completely unstated.  (Remember, however:  The purpose of those
preliminary hearings was to determine whether probable cause existed to
suspect Hans Reiser of involvement in the crime of which he'd been
accused.)

In reading the reports, such as they were, I was lead to wonder:  What's
the likelihood, over the years, that some small drops of my blood have
landed in my wife's car, and hers in mine, and both of ours in some
locations around our residences, that could be findable even years after
the fact by hypothetical forensics teams.  A drop of blood doesn't
necessarily involve assault or murder.  Mine result from scraped shins, 
general clumsiness with tools, etc.

People's childrens' blood (and siblings, etc.) also are of necessity
partial type matches to each other.

The stories have spoken variously of "blood testing" and now "DNA
testing" (just as the earlier dubious wording about "blood splatter" has
been lately replaced by reference to "small drops"), and the recent
stories talk about the blood being "tied to Nina Reiser" without
specifying what that means, specifically.


> Does anyone have info on the size and number of these drops?

Maybe the people who actually attended the preliminary hearings do.
Except in exceptional cases, these and the trials themselves _are_ open
to the public, and a matter of public record.  (See:  Sixth Amendment.)
Otherwise, interested observers are consigned to the vagaries of press
reports -- or can if utterly fascinated by such matters pay the Court
some whopping fee for a copy of the court transcript.