Court upholds coffee cup DNA ruling

Here's an interesting story about a case outside the Inland Empire.
A cup left on a coffee shop table helped some savvy detectives solve a decades-old Los Angeles murder case. But the defendant appealed the conviction, citing an expectation of privacy.
However, the Associated Press reported today that a state appeals court upheld the verdicts.

Court upholds LA conviction on DNA from coffee cup

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A California appeals court has upheld the conviction of a man who was found guilty of a murder based on DNA evidence collected from a plastic foam coffee cup 30 years after the murder took place.
The 2nd District Court of Appeals' decision in the Los Angeles murder case was published Wednesday.
In 2006, Adolph Laudenberg was convicted of the 1972 strangling death of Lois Petrie, based on DNA evidence that detectives collected from the coffee cup more than 30 years later.
The court found that Laudenberg left the cup on a table in a coffee shop and therefore did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.