California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Morris, D064450 (Cal. App. 2015):
The fact that it could not be conclusively proven that defendant deposited his DNA at the time of the offenses did not preclude the jury from considering the prosecution experts' opinions on the matter as a relevant factor along with all the other evidence and to decide what weight to give the evidence. (See People v. Jones (2013) 57 Cal.4th 899, 941-942; People v. Vernon (1979) 89 Cal.App.3d 853, 869.) Further, this case is not in the same posture as the cases cited by defendant where the courts found insufficient
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evidence to support the guilty verdict under circumstances where the sole evidence against the defendant was fingerprint evidence. Even if in some circumstances it might be appropriate to require a showing that fingerprints could have been impressed only at the time of the crime (see, e.g., Mikes v. Borg (9th Cir. 1991) 947 F.2d 353, 356-361), the circumstances of this case, which include evidence in addition to the DNA evidence, do not require such a definitive showing to support the jury's verdict.
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