Hearing Wednesday: Can Criminal Defendants Review DNA Analysis Software Used to Prosecute Them? California Appeals Court to Hear Arguments on Defense Review of DNA Analysis System Fresno – On Wednesday, May 22, at 9 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will argue that criminal defendants have a right to review and evaluate the source code of forensic DNA analysis software programs used to create evidence against them. The case, California v. Johnson , is on appeal to a California appeals court. In Johnson , the defendant was allegedly linked to a series of crimes by a software program called TrueAllele, used to evaluate complex mixtures of DNA samples from multiple people. As part of his defense, Johnson wants his defense team to examine the source code to see exactly how TrueAllele estimates whether a person’s DNA is likely to have contributed to a mixture, including whether the code works in practice as it has been described. However, prosecutors and the manufacture...