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The Frye standard originates from the 1923 case, Frye v. United States, where the court ruled that, to be admissible, scientific evidence must be "sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs." -
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The late 1980's and early 1990's saw a number of judicial challenges to the admissibility of DNA evidence, and the most important cases established the admissibility of DNA evidence when properly collected and analyzed. -
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DNA first made its way into the courts when police in England asked molecular biologist Alec Jefferys, who had begun investigating the use of DNA for forensics, to use DNA to verify the confession of a 17 year-old boy in two rape-murders in the English Midlands. -
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Within DNA testing's first fifteen years of use, another wave of cases came with the advancements in DNA testing technology. -
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The first DNA-based conviction in the United States occured when Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida, convicted Tommy Lee Andrews of rape after DNA tests matched his DNA from a blood sample with that of semen traces found in a rape victim. -
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Since 1989, more than 150 people imprisoned in the United States have been proven innocent through post-conviction DNA testing. -
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Virginia became the first state to enact an all felons' law that required DNA from anyone convicted of a felony. -
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The 1993 case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, where the Supreme Court went beyond Frye to say that evidence must have sufficient scientific validity and reliability to be admitted as "scientific knowledge" that would "assist the trier of fact." -
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The introduction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) forensic DNA database-mandated by the federal DNA Identification Act of 1994, provided another set of pressures on forensic laboratories to ensure their methodologies were sound and validated. -
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The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, implemented in 1994 advocated for uniform standards to be used for forensic DNA testing. -
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Six states had All Felons databases and today there are 38 states with this legislation; the majority of the remaining states have some legislation in review to expand thier DNA databases to include all felons. -
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A district attorney in Wisconsin became one of the first prosecutors to obtain a warrant and file criminal charges against a man identified in the warrant solely by his DNA profile. -
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In a string of cases around the year 2001 where courts repeatedly supported the method of DNA identification as reliable and accepted, with some recommending that the technique in general should no longer be the subject of judicial scrutiny. -
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Virginia became the first state to execute a criminal convicted of murder and rape based on a "cold-hit." -
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President George Bush signed the Justice for All Act, which significantly enhanced funding and guidelines for the use of DNA technology in the judicial process.
