Brown v. Farwell
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
525 F.3d 787 (9th Cir. 2008)
Brown (defendant/petitioner) was convicted of sexual assault largely on the strength of DNA expert Romero's testimony that there was a 99.99967% chance Brown was the assailant — testimony a defense expert later showed committed the "prosecutor's fallacy" by conflating the odds that Brown's DNA type matched someone in general with the odds Brown himself was guilty, while also improperly downplaying the chance that one of Brown's own brothers, also suspected, was the true source of the DNA. The district court granted Brown's habeas petition based on this flawed testimony, and the prosecution appealed.
Whether admitting DNA evidence later shown to be statistically misleading and unreliable renders a trial fundamentally unfair in violation of due process, warranting federal habeas relief.