I don't buy it. I've performed PCR myself. You can amplify DNA off almost unimaginably small quantities of genetic material. If there was no identifiable DNA in these sperm, the DNA must have been seriously degraded, which would have taken time. It just makes no sense to me that they could have been fresh enough to have come from Roethlisberger. Maybe there's something I'm totally missing here (and if there is someone who knows more about PCR and forensics who can explain this,
please do!), but considering they can get DNA from sperm samples that are days or weeks old, I don't see how they could have failed to get it from a sample that was supposedly only a few hours old.
It's easy to dismiss the DNA evidence (or lack thereof) by pointing to the botched police work, but that is irrelevant here. The rape kit would have been performed by trained medical personnel in the hospital. The police could not have botched it. Now it's possible, in the worst-case scenario, that the attending officer failed to give her instructions not to use the bathroom (in which case he should be jailed, in my opinion), and that she washed away a good chunk of the DNA from her vaginal canal, but that still wouldn't explain the lack of identifiable DNA in the sperm on her panties. Or anywhere else on her body, for that matter.
It's also not enough to argue that the drunk Roethlisberger probably shot blanks, which is what I would have assumed (though it's apparently not true, as sperm
were found on her panties), since there are so many other potential sources of DNA: saliva, mucus, hair, skin flakes, etc. It's almost impossible
not to leave DNA on someone in your vicinity, particularly if the kind of contact that is alleged here actually occurred.
As I've said repeatedly, I don't consider Roethlisberger blameless in this affair. I consider his conduct reprehensible and disgusting. But there's something about this woman's story that just doesn't add up, and I've seen enough men's lives get fucked over by unstable women (my own best man is serving 10 years in a Washington penitentiary on trumped-up charges he was too scared to fight) that I'm extremely wary. It pisses me off, frankly, that just because it would look uncompassionate to prosecute a woman who's supposedly been sexually assaulted, she won't be charged for her own misconduct on this evening. Underage, cruising not one but several bars on a fake ID, consuming vast quantities of alcohol -- at the very least an underage drinking ticket should be in order. And that's without even considering the possibility she conspired with her friends to give the police a false official statement.
Of course, it'll never happen.