ABSTRACT
It is ironic that the first DNA exoneration in the United States was brought about by a high-quality, traditional police investigation in which DNA profiling played a secondary role. It is quite possible that David Vasquez would have been exonerated in 1989 for the 1984 murder of Carolyn Hamm even if DNA profiling had been unavailable (see National Registry of Exonerations, n.d.; Warden, 2005, p. 396). The convergence of Timothy Spencer, a diabolical serial killer, David Vasquez, a hapless innocent, and Joe Horgas, a single-minded and competitive detective, tells us a lot about the dynamics of police investigation that must be better understood to reduce the police role in miscarriages of justice and possibly improve investigations.
