Entries tagged with “Edward Blake”

Oct 15, 2025

Edward T. Blake, Pioneer of Using DNA to Prove Innocence, Dies at 80

Edward T. Blake, a foren­sic sci­en­tist who helped pio­neer the use of DNA analy­sis in crim­i­nal cas­es and whose work helped exon­er­ate more than 50 peo­ple, includ­ing those on death row, died in August 2025 at age 80 from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Dr. Blake was the first foren­sic sci­en­tist to use poly­merase chain reac­tion test­ing, or PCR, on crime-scene DNA. The tech­nique allowed Dr. Blake to extract usable genet­ic infor­ma­tion from evi­dence sam­ples that could not previously…