Not DNA united
The courts do not distinguish between twins and prefer to justify them
Ekaterina Korinenko, Izvestia
A twin brother or sister sounds like a perfect crime plan. In Belgium, a court acquitted two brothers because it could not figure out which of the two had done something wrong. A shared DNA saved twins in Malaysia from the death penalty in a drug smuggling case a few years ago. How identical twins create legal precedents (and not always in favor of each other), what the exchange of documents can turn out to be and when criminologists learn to distinguish them, read the Izvestia material.
Ibrahim and Murat, 28, were walking in Leuven, a university town near Brussels, when one of them fell off his bike. Passers-by found it funny. The brother of the unsuccessful cyclist found the laughter offensive and hit the man who turned up. The twin tried to grab him by the scruff of the neck and stop him, but it didn't work out.
They were sentenced four years later. And he turned out to be acquitted – the court did not have enough evidence to find one of the brothers guilty. It is impossible to distinguish them on the cameras, and the interrogation did not bring clarity.
"It is obvious that one of them actively tried to restrain the other. Therefore, he cannot be tried either as a criminal or as an accomplice," the judge said.
Two from the casket
Courts, and not only European ones, have repeatedly acted on this principle – it is better to acquit an attacker than to punish an innocent one. In a British rugby club, a man named Churchill watched a match between Wales and South Africa with his young son. There he was spotted by two Higgins twins: they recognized him as the man who four years ago judged a billiards tournament with their participation. Apparently, not in their favor, because the brothers unequivocally offered the man to get out. He refused, but the twins caught up with him in the toilet.
The testimony about who started hitting whom and why varied, and the Higgins also claimed that both cars were smashed the morning after the fight. The jury of the court in Cardiff took less than an hour to reach a verdict – both are innocent, because they still can't make out.
According to rough estimates, there are about 70-80 million pairs of twins in the world. And they are involved in only 1% of criminal offenses, The New York Times wrote.
This case occurred in 2009, as did the trial of a major robbery in Germany. It was about damage of more than €5 million, but it was not possible to determine the culprit. 27-year-old twins of Arab origin were suspected of a spectacular robbery of one of the largest shopping centers not only in Berlin, but throughout Europe, KaDeWe. They presumably made their way there from the roof with the help of climbing equipment. A couple of weeks later, the brothers were detained – they were found by identified DNA traces on a glove that they dropped.
But the methods of DNA analysis used by the police were not enough to determine which of them it belonged to. There was no other evidence, so they were released. The German press wrote that, according to the testimonies of friends, they used their similarity all their lives: then they will exchange rights, then they will swap places at a convenient moment. It is ironic that the order of expulsion from Germany at the same time came only to one of the brothers.
We didn 't rejoice for long
In Brazil, the court went the other way, however, the case was not about a crime. It was about alimony – a woman got pregnant from one of the twins and demanded alimony. She went to court because she couldn't figure out on her own who exactly went on dates with her (and as it turned out, the twins alternated). The court couldn't either – the DNA text didn't give anything. And the brothers were silent. Both were entered in the birth certificate, which means that two people have to pay alimony.
All these cases are about one thing – law enforcement agencies do not have enough technology to distinguish between twins. Although in general their DNA may differ, geneticists say, changes occur during life. But now in criminology, a method is used in which the entire genome is compared, and 13 of its individual sections. Their coincidence in people without family ties is possible in one out of a trillion cases. It doesn't work with identical twins.
But geneticists have found a way out. Five years ago, scientists from Eurofins Scientific (Brussels) decided to conduct an experiment based on the fact that there are differences in the genome of 80% of identical twins. The analysis of the complete genome helped to identify them. The experiment turned out to be successful, and the company began to seek help in criminal cases.
It all started with the district attorney from Boston, who was conducting a rape case – the suspects were twins. The judge refused to use the test results because the company's research was not confirmed by publication in a scientific journal. This year such a publication was published.
Multiplication of problems
With age, twins lose their full identity, which makes it difficult for even relatives to distinguish them in childhood. So the scam was uncovered by Russian law enforcement officers. In Udmurtia two years ago, my brother came to a court hearing in the case of a death threat instead of a twin. The bailiff, who saw both, suspected something was wrong, and as a result, the deception was revealed. The fake suspect received 10 months of probation.
When exchanging documents, twins can be caught checking fingerprints. It still has to come to the verification of fingerprints – when crossing the border, they are often limited to checking the passport. But at Novosibirsk Tolmachevo airport, they recognized the catch even without it. The wife of a resident of Novosibirsk really wanted to go to Thailand on a "burning ticket". But the husband did not have a passport, so he decided to borrow a document from his twin brother.
As a result, a criminal case was opened against him for an attempt to illegally cross the state border, but the punishment was mild – 40 thousand rubles fine. And although there are no separate norms in the legislation in this regard (there is a norm on conscription, which does not recommend sending twins to different military units, but this is completely different), savvy, as Russian practice shows, can help to identify violators.
And the exchange of documents can only bring problems. One of the twins had his driver's license taken away after the accident. The second one continued to drive on his own, but when checking documents, traffic police officers threatened punishment – as it turned out, the database identified them as one person, because the surname, initials, date of birth and date of receipt of the rights are the same. In the end, the problem was solved, but only after proceedings in the department and an appeal to the department.
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