Two college students (twins) were accused of cheating by pointing on a test, only to win $1.5 million in damages after a jury decided that their answers matched normal due to their genetic link.
Because of the accusation, the sisters, Kayla and Kelly Bingham, were subjected to many difficult situations and defamation, because their medical university in South Carolina described them as “cheats”, considering that the similar scores they obtained in the exam were more than a coincidence, reports a local Arabic daily.
“It was devastating,” Kelly said of the accusation. “We both know we did nothing wrong.” After years of suffering, a jury ruled that the medical school had slandered the two students, and awarded them $1.5 million in damages.
The story began, after taking the exam in May 2016, when Kelly said that “we were assigned seats at the same table, we were 4 or 5 feet away, we could not see each other because the monitors blocked the view.”
After two weeks, the college officially accused them of cheating. Kelly told the university council that their answers had been very similar since the first grade, but the council insisted that there was cooperation between them, which forced the two sisters to withdraw from the university in September 2016.
“It honestly killed me,” Kelly told Insider. “I had dreamed of becoming a doctor since I was little. Kayla and I wanted to help people.” The sisters decided to give up their medical ambitions and enroll in law school.
The case took five years, with the sisters’ lawyer presenting to the jury their education records, which showed how they had obtained identical or near-identical scores on tests they had taken in the past.
Nancy Segal, a psychologist who specializes in behavioral genetics and the study of twins, testified in court, and said that she would only have been surprised if the two sisters had not ended up with the same grades.
“They are genetically prepared to behave in the same way,” Segal said. “They were brought up in the same way and they are natural partners in one environment.”
Kayla stated that she held Kelly’s hand when the verdict was issued, adding: “It was the biggest moment of our lives. We lived with this for 6 years and finally got everything back.”
