Court delays Texas execution that had been set for Thursday

A decade ago, one Clifton Lamar Williams was convicted for murdering a 93-year-old woman. The execution has been put on hold because it has been determined that the expert testimony on DNA that was apparently pivotal in the conviction turns out to be flawed.

Now, I’m all in favor of accuracy in the legal system. In fact, i’d demand it, and would have little tolerance for deception or other chicanery on the part of prosecutors. After all, many prosecutors have proven to be much more interested in racking up their numbers of successful prosecutions… *not* in actually serving justice. And so, “the DNA testimony was wrong” sure makes me take notice.

But… ummm…

Williams is black, and prosecutors said the probability of another black person with the same DNA profile found in Schneider’s missing car was one in 40 sextillion. Jurors in 2006 were told the probability was one in 43 sextillion. A sextillion is defined as a 1 followed by 21 zeros.

As a poster on Fark noted:

That’s one out of the population of over 5 trillion planet earths.

I have no idea if the probability is *actually* “1 in 40X10^21” or some other very different number, but the difference between 1-in-40 sextillion and 1-in-43 sextillion is so small as to be *beyond* ridiculous. Makes me think something else might be afoot.