on the dna rod surface to provide spatial information and create a nanoscale barcode. epifluorescence and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy reliably deciphered spatial information between fluorophores. by moving the three fluorophores on the dna rod, this nanoscale barcode created 216 fluorescence patterns. cases in 1986, richard buckland was exonerated, despite having admitted to the rape and murder of a teenager near leicester, the city where dna profiling was first developed. this was the first use of dna fingerprinting in a criminal investigation, and the first to prove a suspect's innocence. the following year colin pitchfork was identified as the perpetrator of the same murder, in addition to another, using the same techniques that had cleared buckland. in 1987, genetic fingerprinting was used in a us criminal court for the first time in the trial of a man accused of unlawful intercourse with a mentally disabled 14-year-old female who gave birth to a baby. in 1987, florida rapist tommie lee andrews was the first person in the united states to be convicted as a result of dna evidence, for raping a woman during a burglary; he was convicted on 6 november 1987, and sentenced to 22 years in prison. in 1990, a violent murder of a young student in brno was the first criminal case in czechoslovakia solved by dna evidence, with the murderer sentenced to 23 years in prison. in 1992, dna from a palo verde tree was used to convict mark alan bogan of murder. dna from seed pods of a tree at the crime scene was found to match that of seed pods found in bogan's truck. this is the first instance of plant dna admitted in a criminal case. in 1994, the claim that anna anderson was grand duchess anastasia nikolaevna of russia was tested after her death using samples of her tissue that had been stored at a charlottesville, virginia hospital following a medical procedure. the tissue was tested using dna fingerprinting, and showed that she bore no relation to the romanovs. in 1994, earl washington, jr., of virginia had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment a week before his scheduled execution date based on dna evidence. he received a full pardon in 2000 based on more advanced testing. in 1999, raymond easton, a disabled man from swindon, england, was arrested and detained for seven hours in connection with a burglary. he was released due to an inaccurate dna match. his dna had been retained on file after an unrelated domestic incident some time previously. in 2000 frank lee smith was proved innocent by dna profiling of the murder of an eight-year-old girl after spending 14 years on death row in florida, usa. however he had died of cancer just before his innocence was proven. in view of this the florida state governor ordered that in future any death row inmate claiming innocence should have dna testing. in may 2000 gordon graham murdered paul gault at his home in lisburn, northern ireland. graham was convicted of the murder when his dna was found on a sports bag left in the house as part of an elaborate ploy to suggest the murder occurred after a burglary had gone wrong. graham was having an affair with the victim's wife at the time of the murder. it was the first time low copy number dna was used in northern ireland. in 2001, wayne butler was convicted for the murder of celia douty. it was the first murder in australia to be solved using dna profiling. in 2002, the body of james hanratty, hanged in 1962 for the "a6 murder", was exhumed and dna samples from the body and members of his family were analysed. the results convinced court of appeal judges that hanratty's guilt, which had been strenuously disputed by campaigners, was proved "beyond doubt". paul foot and some other campaigners continued to believe in hanratty's innocence and argued that the dna evidence could have been contaminated, noting that the small dna samples from items of clothing, kept in a police laboratory for over 40 years "in conditions that do not satisfy modern evidential standards", had had to be subjected to very new amplification techniques in order to yield any genetic profile. however, no dna other than hanratty's was found on the evidence tested, contrary to what would have been expected had the evidence indeed been contaminated. in august 2002, annalisa vicentini was shot dead in tuscany. bartender peter hamkin, 23, was arrested, in merseyside in march 2003 on an extradition warrant heard at bow street magistrates' court in london to establish whether he should be taken to italy to face a murder charge. dna "proved" he shot her, but he was cleared on other evidence. in 2003, welshman jeffrey gafoor was convicted of the 1988 murder of lynette white, when crime scene evidence collected 12 years earlier was re-examined using str techniques, resulting in a match with his nephew. in june 2003, because of new dna evidence, dennis halstead, john kogut and john restivo won a re-trial on their murder conviction, their convictions were struck down and they were released. in 2004, dna testing shed new light into the mysterious 1912 disappearance of bobby dunbar, a four-year-old boy who vanished during a fishing trip. he was allegedly found alive eight months later in the custody of william cantwell walters, but another woman claimed that the boy was her son, bruce anderson, whom she had entrusted in walters' custody. the courts disbelieved her claim and convicted walters for the kidnapping. the boy was raised and known as bobby dunbar throughout the rest of his life. however, dna tests on dunbar's son and nephew revealed the two were not related, thus establishing that the boy found in 1912 was not bobby dunbar, whose real fate remains unknown. in 2005, gary leiterman was convicted of the 1969 murder of jane mixer, a law student at the university of michigan, after dna found on mixer's pantyhose was matched to leiterman. dna in a drop of blood on mixer's hand was matched to john ruelas, who was only four years old in 1969 and was never successfully connected to the case in any other way. leiterman's defense unsuccessfully argued that the unexplained match of the blood spot to ruelas pointed to cross-contamination and raised doubts about the reliability of the lab's identification of leiterman. in november 2008, anthony curcio was arrested for masterminding one of the most elaborately planned armored car heists in history. dna evidence linked curcio to the crime. in march 2009, sean hodgson—convicted of 1979 killing of teresa de simone, 22, in her car in southampton—was released after tests proved dna from the scene was not his. it was later matched to dna retrieved from the exhumed body of david lace. lace had previously confessed to the crime but was not believed by the detectives. he served time in prison for other crimes committed at the same time as the murder and then committed suicide in 1988. in 2012, a case of babies being switched, many decades earlier, was discovered by accident. after undertaking dna testing for other purposes, alice collins plebuch was advised that her ancestry appeared to include a significant ashkenazi jewish component, despite a belief in her family that they were of predominantly irish descent. profiling of plebuch's genome suggested that it included distinct and unexpected components associated with ashkenazi, middle eastern, and eastern european populations. this led plebuch to conduct an extensive investigation, after which she concluded that her father had been switched (possibly accidentally) with another baby soon after birth. plebuch was also able to identify the biological ancestors of her father. in 2016 anthea ring, abandoned as baby, was able to use a dna sample and dna matching database to discover her deceased mother's identity and roots in county mayo, ireland. a recently developed forensic test was subsequently used to capture dna from saliva left on old stamps and envelopes by her suspected father, uncovered through painstaking genealogy research. the dna in the first three samples was too degraded to use. however, on the fourth, more than enough dna was found. the test, which has a degree of accuracy acceptable in uk courts, proved that a man named patrick coyne was her biological father. in 2018 the buckskin girl (a body found in 1981 in ohio) was identified as marcia king from arkansas using dna genealogical techniques in 2018 joseph james deangelo was arrested as the main suspect for the golden state killer using dna and genealogy techniques. in 2018, william earl talbott ii was arrested as a suspect for the 1987 murders of jay cook and tanya van cuylenborg with the assistance of genealogical dna testing. the same genetic genealogist that helped in this case also helped police with 18 other arrests in 2018. in 2018, with the use of next generation identification system's enhanced biometric capabilities, the fbi matched the fingerprint of a suspect named timothy david nelson and arrested him 20 years after the alleged sexual assault. dna evidence as evidence to prove rights of succession to british titles dna testing has been used to establish the right of succession to british titles. cases: baron moynihan pringle baronets