Innocence Project

Roland cotton was charged with two counts of rape and two counts of burglary. The was sentenced to life plus 54 years in prison and served 10.5 of that sentence for a crime that he didn't do. The evidence that was found against him was a flashlight found at his home that looked like the one in the house that was broken into. A photo taken, rubber from the sole of his shoe that looked identical to the one found on crime scene, and a police lineups by one of the victims.In 1987 Cotton was retried but his case didn't last long and he returned jail. This incident happened in 1984. In 1994 the chief defender requested two new lawyers to take over his case and in 1995 all of the evidence that was against him got released.

The outline of the progression of DNA technologies

· 1865, when Gregor Mendel was the father of Genetics.

· 1947, Erwin Chargoff found the DNA bases follow certain “rules” He also found the composition of species A=T, C=G for all species.

· 1951, Rosaland Franklin obtained sharp X-Ray diffraction photographs of DNA

· 1953, Watson and Crick description of the 3-D structure of DNA.

· 1958, Meslson and Stahl found how DNA replication is semi-conservative.

1977- 2000 The Floodgates Open

· 1970, Smith and Nathan’s discovery of restriction endonucleases.

· 1973, Boyer, Cohen and Chang transform E. Coli with recombinant plasmid.

· 1984, Alec Jeffrey introduces technique for DNA fingerprinting to identify individuals.

· 1997, Dolly cloned from the cell of an adult ewwe, DNA microarry technology developed.

· 2000, The Drosophila genome is completed. The Arabidopsis genome is completed. The human genome is reported to be completed.

What i will take away from this project is a new understanding of how our government works and how they handle these criminal cases. This changes my perspective because i really thought that our government had enough compassion for others and they would listen to people who said that they didn't do a certain thing. But in reality the government really doesnt care and just lets things go as they are. that is what i learned from this project.