As the curtain on Bull’s first season starts to close, certain subplots are coalescing. This week, prosecutors finally brought charges against Dr. Bull’s in-house counsel, Benny, for allegedly fabricating evidence while working at the district attorney’s office nearly a decade ago. The charges only emerged because the convicted defendant was released based on new DNA evidence. Back then, the DNA test used five markers with three of them matching the defendant, while the new test uses 50 markers with only 14 matching. To make sense of this discrepancy, prosecutors contend that Benny lied to secure the conviction. Of course, Dr. Bull comes to the defense of his colleague and friend.

It is difficult to overstate the role that the forensic evidence revolution has played in our criminal justice system. DNA evidence has been employed to break cold cases, connect seemingly unrelated crimes, and—as at issue in this week’s episode—correct wrongful convictions. It is also the subject of great controversy over citizen privacy, as many states have begun creating DNA profile banks so as to quickly identify suspects. DNA evidence has been so successful in transforming our legal landscape because of its perceived scientific reliability. To be sure, modern forensics—more so than any other evidence, scientific or otherwise—enjoys unparalleled probative value in the minds of jurors.

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