Expanding criminal DNA database makes sense
Monday, January 5, 2009 12:12 AM PST
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On Friday, federal authorities will begin collecting DNA samples from everyone they arrested on felony charges. State Rep. Mark Miloscia, D-Federal Way, believes Washington authorities ought to follow the federal government’s lead. He plans to introduce legislation next week requiring the collection of DNA samples from all those arrested on state felony charges.
We agree with Miloscia and support his proposal. Current state law requires that DNA samples be collected only from those who have been convicted of a felony or a few gross misdemeanors, such as stalking. Miloscia has taken care not to expand this practice in ways that might risk abuse of individual rights. His bill, like one he introduced in 2005, stipulates that DNA samples be taken only from arrested felons. Should charges be dismissed or they be acquitted, the samples would be destroyed and removed from the state database.
Miloscia insists that the measure would help solve crimes, and he’s right. The current law — enacted for felony convictions in 1989 and expanded in 2002 to include those convicted of some gross misdemeanors — allowed Washington to build a database that’s proven to be one of law enforcement’s more useful crime-fighting tools. This database has benefited not just the victims of rape and other brutal crimes, but also those wrongly accused or convicted of such crimes. DNA tests in 2007 from a child rape case in Olympia, for example, cleared one suspect of charges and led to the arrest of another.
The state’s DNA database has been tremendously helpful in solving crimes old and new. In 2004, King County prosecutors brought charges in a 1968 murder, based on a match between DNA evidence gathered at the crime scene in 1968 and a Walla Walla inmate’s genetic profile found in the database.
The potential for such matches has grown along with the database. The only hindrance has been the cost of testing DNA samples collected at crime scenes. The state continues to collect DNA samples from more criminal cases than it can afford to quickly test, slowing the growth of the state database. Miloscia’s legislation wouldn’t solve this problem. That issue requires more cost-efficient test procedures, the availability of more state funds and/or additional federal grant money.
Nevertheless, collecting DNA samples from those arrested on felony charges is a sensible way to broaden the state database more quickly when funding is available. And it poses no apparent threat to civil liberties. As Miloscia told The Associated Press, “We take their fingerprints, their pictures and their addresses when they are arrested. What’s wrong with taking their DNA?”
Nothing that we can see.
cynic954 wrote on Jan 5, 2009 9:55 AM:
TDN Bad Boy wrote on Jan 5, 2009 12:03 PM:
DUH wrote on Jan 5, 2009 1:32 PM:
banana hammock wrote on Jan 5, 2009 3:05 PM:
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didnt speak up because I wasnt a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didnt speak up because I wasnt a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
Ive modified it but I think it works. "
TDN Bad Boy wrote on Jan 5, 2009 3:44 PM:
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