Brickbat: DNA Doesn't Lie

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has agreed to pay $25.2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by two men who each spent over 30 years in prison after they were convicted of murder based on testimony from a state forensic scientist that a judge later determined to be false. No physical evidence tied the men to the murder except a towel that celebrity forensic scientist Henry Lee, then head of the state crime lab, testified had blood on it. Their sentences were vacated in 2020 when, after further testing, a judge ruled there was no blood on the towel. A judge earlier this year found there was no evidence Lee ever tested the towel for blood. Lee denies fabricating evidence and said the blood on the towel may have degraded in the years between him testing it and when it was retested.