DNA evidence has led to the arrest of a Chilean man for the 1997 murder of University of Colorado co-ed Susannah Chase according to this Associated Press story by Ivan Moreno. Diego Olmos-Alcalde was in the Boulder County Jail for a parole violation when he was arrested for the Chase killing. He served time in prison for kidnapping in 2000 and had three other arrests on sex-related charges. Thousands of cold cases in virtually every part of the country have been solved through DNA as the number of samples in state and federal databases has increased. This report from the San Antonio Police Department provides one example.

The Murder Conviction of a New Jersey man who admitted shooting his girlfriend, beheading her, and boiling her head in a pot, was overturned yesterday in a 5-2 per curiam ruling by the state Supreme Court. The defendant, George Jenewicz, claimed that he killed the woman in self defense as reported in this Associated Press story by Jeffery Gold. The Court's five-judge majority concluded that three relatively minor trial errors may have influenced the jury's guilty verdict. The Chief Judge's dissent found this to be a stretch.