Lawrence OP / Flickr

The state Supreme Court will decide whether a woman can have her ex-husband’s parental rights revoked because he’s not the biological father of her daughter.

Paternity was never an issue in the divorce of John and Jennie Glaubius, and the divorce order treats the ex-husband as the father of a little girl born while the couple was married. But a paternity test done after the divorce determined the biological father was almost certainly a man the mother was having an affair with during the marriage.

Michigan Department of Corrections

Attorneys today will ask for a new trial for a man convicted of a 1996 rape and murder in Kalkaska.

They say new evidence raises serious doubts about the man’s guilt.

Jamie Lee Peterson is serving a life sentence for the 1996 murder of Geraldine Montgomery. He did confess to the crime, but he later recanted.

Last year, authorities arrested another man after DNA evidence connected him to the crime.

Caitlin Plummer is with the Michigan Innocence Clinic. She says the limits of DNA testing at the time were used by prosecutors to sway jurors against Peterson.  

Pelle Sten / Creative Commons

The Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to take up a bill this week that would expand DNA testing in the state.

Senate Bill 105 would require people to provide a DNA sample when they are arrested for committing or attempting to commit a crime that is considered a felony or "for which the offender may be punished by imprisonment for more than one year."

The bill was introduced by Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker (R-Lawton) last week.

Schuitmaker’s office says the bill would make DNA collection the same as fingerprint collection.

Rick Van Laan / ArcPoint Labs

Pregnant women in Michigan can now use a simple blood test to identify the father of their unborn child.

Three labs across the state now offer the noninvasive prenatal paternity test. The Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Lansing sites are part of the ArcPoint Franchise Group.

With only a blood sample from the mother and a cheek swab from the potential father, paternity can be determined as early as five weeks after conception.

At that time, the pregnant woman's blood starts carrying fragments of the fetus' DNA.

The labs send the mother's blood samples and potential father's cheek swab to a different lab in Columbia, Md., where technicians compare genetic markers to determine paternity.

Pelle Sten / Creative Commons

new state law that mandates inmates give DNA samples is helping police solve dozens of cold cases.

Since the mid 90s, all inmates have had to give DNA samples when they exit prisons and jails in Michigan. They could volunteer the DNA before they were released, but they didn’t have to.

“Obviously when someone refuses to give a sample, something’s up,” Michigan State Police Captain Greg Michaud said.



