DNA

  DETROIT (AP) - The Michigan Supreme Court is looking at the case of a Detroit-area man who was convicted of murder based on DNA.

  The issue is whether Johnny Ray Kennedy's rights were violated when a judge refused to appoint an expert at public expense who could help the defense.

  DNA was critical to the case, especially because Kennedy was charged with murder 20 years after the crime. Prosecutors had two experts who could talk to jurors about DNA but Kennedy had none at the 2014 trial.

  LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A Lansing-area prosecutor says DNA results in a 1981 murder have "created questions about everything" related to the case.

  Gretchen Whitmer spoke to The Associated Press after a Friday court hearing in the case of Michael Darnell Harris. He's seeking to have his second-degree murder conviction thrown out after DNA tests on the victim's clothing point to another man who was 13 at the time.

The state Supreme Court will decide whether a woman can have her ex-husband’s parental rights revoked because he’s not the biological father of her daughter.

Paternity was never an issue in the divorce of John and Jennie Glaubius, and the divorce order treats the ex-husband as the father of a little girl born while the couple was married. But a paternity test done after the divorce determined the biological father was almost certainly a man the mother was having an affair with during the marriage.

Attorneys today will ask for a new trial for a man convicted of a 1996 rape and murder in Kalkaska.

They say new evidence raises serious doubts about the man’s guilt.

Jamie Lee Peterson is serving a life sentence for the 1996 murder of Geraldine Montgomery. He did confess to the crime, but he later recanted.

Last year, authorities arrested another man after DNA evidence connected him to the crime.

Caitlin Plummer is with the Michigan Innocence Clinic. She says the limits of DNA testing at the time were used by prosecutors to sway jurors against Peterson.  

The Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to take up a bill this week that would expand DNA testing in the state.

Senate Bill 105 would require people to provide a DNA sample when they are arrested for committing or attempting to commit a crime that is considered a felony or "for which the offender may be punished by imprisonment for more than one year."

The bill was introduced by Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker (R-Lawton) last week.

Schuitmaker’s office says the bill would make DNA collection the same as fingerprint collection.

Pregnant women in Michigan can now use a simple blood test to identify the father of their unborn child.

Three labs across the state now offer the noninvasive prenatal paternity test. The Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Lansing sites are part of the ArcPoint Franchise Group.

With only a blood sample from the mother and a cheek swab from the potential father, paternity can be determined as early as five weeks after conception.

At that time, the pregnant woman's blood starts carrying fragments of the fetus' DNA.

The labs send the mother's blood samples and potential father's cheek swab to a different lab in Columbia, Md., where technicians compare genetic markers to determine paternity.

A new state law that mandates inmates give DNA samples is helping police solve dozens of cold cases.

Since the mid 90s, all inmates have had to give DNA samples when they exit prisons and jails in Michigan. They could volunteer the DNA before they were released, but they didn’t have to.

“Obviously when someone refuses to give a sample, something’s up,” Michigan State Police Captain Greg Michaud said.