DNA Testing Gets An Unexpected O.K.

DEFENSE LAWYERS MUST HAVE BEEN THRILLED BY the article on the front page of the New York Times. It said a report about to be released by the National Research Council would reject "DNA fingerprinting," also known as DNA typing.

The practice involves testing material like hair or blood from a crime scene and matching DNA in it to samples from a suspect. In theory, the chances of a mistake are fewer than 1 in 100,000, compared with 1 in 10 for conventional blood typing.

But while DNA typing has been widely used since the mid-1980s, defense lawyers often cried foul. The test, they argued, is not always done carefully, and the results tend to make jurors overlook other evidence. Now here was a respected research organization urging courts to ban DNA fingerprinting until the scientific basis for the technique could be established more firmly. What could be better?

Except the report didn't say that. The council did propose that the labs handling the testing be very strictly accredited by an independent agency. It recommended that the odds of an error be calculated and presented to juries more conservatively than is now done. But it otherwise endorsed DNA fingerprinting for solving crimes and said the method should continue to be used in courts. That doesn't mean defense lawyers won't try to get old cases reopened or move to bar DNA tests from new ones. It does mean it will be harder for them to succeed than they might have thought just a few days ago.