7-20-2009 Massachusetts:
MAYNARD - Paul E. Petrino stepped into the locked second-floor, humidity-controlled room in the Massachusetts State Police Forensic Technology Center in Maynard.
There, the temperature is kept at 66 degrees and more than 82,000 sealed and numbered-coded envelopes line the shelves.
The envelopes are a key component in the state’s DNA database, where blood samples taken from criminals are stored.
“They are assigned a number,” Petrino, the state police sergeant in charge of the forensic support section, said of the blood samples. “There is no name on the card.”
Police and prosecutors say the state’s DNA database is a major tool in cracking a growing number of cases in the state.
The database — and DNA technology — has also helped exclude suspects and freed some people who were convicted before the advances in the forensic field.
Last year in Massachusetts, there were 452 case-to-case or case-to-suspect “hits” in the DNA database systems, up from 121 in 2004.
Of that number last year, 15 were in Plymouth County, 44 were in Norfolk County and 32 in Bristol County.
At least nine people imprisoned on charges ranging from rape to murder were freed thanks to DNA evidence comparison through the Innocence Project, founded in 1992 to help prisoners who could be proven innocent by DNA testing.
In Brockton, the database linked a series of prostitute rapes spanning several years. A New Hampshire man, Brian Knippers, now charged in the attacks is awaiting trial. It also helped tie a convicted sex offender from Indiana to a 2003 unsolved rape here.
“It certainly has helped over the years,” said State Police Lt. Col. Stephen Matthews, commanding officer of the division of investigative services.
The DNA lab in Maynard is tucked in an cement building, next to a cable company.
Rows of offender blood samples line library-like shelves. Offender identification cards are stored in a separate room. In yet another room, technicians work in a sterile laboratory to analyze samples.
HOW DNA SYSTEM WORKS
The blood samples stored at the Maynard lab are taken from anyone convicted of a felony in the state and put on specially treated cards which binds the DNA to it.
Some samples are taken in jails and prisoners, other samples are taken when the offenders are on probation or parole.
Other DNA samples — about 3,200 called “forensic unknowns” — collected by investigators at crime scenes are stored in a different area at the crime lab.
Once the blood sample from offenders are taken, the cards — sealed in a bag — dry for about two weeks. Samples are then “punched” from the card by a special machine, and then sent to the lab in the building for review and analysis.
The DNA profile found in the blood is then uploaded first to the state DNA database, called the State DNA Index System, then to the national database, known as the National DNA Index System, using the software system CODIS —or Combined DNA Index System.
The FBI does a nationwide search weekly to see if offender profiles or cases match any unsolved cases. The state does a search at least once a week.
If there is a match, another sample from the “blood” card is “punched” for testing for another comparison.
Investigators also will pull the identification card, stored separately from the blood samples. Investigators will verify the person’s identity through a fingerprint comparison on the cards, make sure the person should legally be in the database.
If needed, another blood sample will be taken from the person to be used as evidence in the case. The sample used in the database is not used as evidence — only as probable cause to get another sample of the suspect’s DNA profile to use in court.
“The match is just the first step,” state police Major James M. Connolly, deputy division commander for forensic services.
Connolly has seen first-hand the key role the database plays in solving crimes.
While a state police homicide detective, he investigated the 2004 slaying of Joanne Presti and her 12-year-old daughter, Alyssa, in Woburn.
“We didn’t have much to go on,” Connolly said. That is, until DNA evidence from the scene was entered into the database.
Within five days, the sample matched that of a sex offender. The suspect, Michael Bizanowicz of Lowell, was later convicted of two counts of murder.
The state collects, on average, 700 DNA samples from offenders a month. It can take six to nine months for a routine sample to be analyzed and uploaded to the database for comparison, about the national average.
However, Petrino said cases that need immediate action can be done within a week.
As the database grows, so does the number of “hits.”
Petrino said he’s seen more breaking-and-entering cases in the state linked through DNA as more DNA evidence is collected and entered into the system.
DNA FREES INNOCENTS
Petrino and Connolly said police are aware of the importance of DNA evidence and juries look for that information when cases come to trial.
DNA evidence is not only important to find suspects — it can eliminate people as suspects, police and prosecutors said.
“It is a great tool for everybody in the criminal justice system,” Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said. “It is not just used to incriminate suspects. Our job is to exculpate those who need to be exculpated.”
That has happened a number of times.
For example, in Brockton, when several prostitutes were brutally raped, several suspects were eliminated early on because their DNA did not match DNA evidence found on the victims.
Mike Scott, who prosecuted another rape case where the suspect was identified thanks to the database, said DNA is a crucial element in many cases. “It has helped defendants too,” he said. “I’m a big proponent of DNA.” ..Source.. by Maureen Boyle
July 20, 2009
MA- The state police forensic lab in Maynard is central facility for law enforcement DNA technology in Massachusetts
April 18, 2009
F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases
4-18-2009 National:
Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.
Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will also collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants.
The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its rate of growth from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase.
Law enforcement officials say that expanding the DNA databanks to include legally innocent people will help solve more violent crimes. They point out that DNA has helped convict thousands of criminals and has exonerated more than 200 wrongfully convicted people.
But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society.
“DNA databases were built initially to deal with violent sexual crimes and homicides — a very limited number of crimes,” said Harry Levine, a professor of sociology at City University of New York who studies policing trends. “Over time more and more crimes of decreasing severity have been added to the database. Cops and prosecutors like it because it gives everybody more information and creates a new suspect pool.”
Courts have generally upheld laws authorizing compulsory collection of DNA from convicts and ex-convicts under supervised release, on the grounds that criminal acts diminish privacy rights.
DNA extraction upon arrest potentially erodes that argument, a recent Congressional study found. “Courts have not fully considered legal implications of recent extensions of DNA-collection to people whom the government has arrested but not tried or convicted,” the report said.
Minors are required to provide DNA samples in 35 states upon conviction, and in some states upon arrest. Three juvenile suspects in November filed the only current constitutional challenge against taking DNA at the time of arrest. The judge temporarily stopped DNA collection from the three youths, and the case is continuing.
Sixteen states now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of misdemeanors. In South Carolina in 2007, a court ordered a DNA sample to be taken from a man found guilty of loitering for the purpose of prostitution.
As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government’s power is becoming too broadly applied. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions and other cases where police don’t have a need to obtain DNA because it’s not relevant to charges facing them,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year from 200,000.
One of those was Brian Roberts, 29, who was awaiting trial for methamphetamine possession. Inside the huge Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles last month, Mr. Roberts let a sheriff’s deputy swab the inside of his cheek.
Mr. Roberts’s DNA will be translated into a numerical sequence at the F.B.I.’s DNA database, the largest in the world.
The system will search for matches between Mr. Roberts’s DNA and other profiles every Monday, from now into the indeterminate future — until one day, perhaps decades hence, Mr. Roberts might leave a drop of blood or semen at some crime scene.
Law enforcement officials say that DNA extraction upon arrest is no different than fingerprinting at routine bookings and that states purge profiles after people are cleared of suspicion. In practice, a number of defense lawyers say this is a laborious process that often involves a court order. (The F.B.I. says it has never received a request to purge a profile from its own database.)
When DNA is taken in error, expunging a profile can be just as difficult. In Pennsylvania, where DNA cannot be taken from juveniles for misdemeanors, Ellyn Sapper, a Philadelphia public defender, has spent weeks trying to expunge the profile of a 14-year-old boy guilty of assault and bicycle theft — his first misdemeanor. “I’m going to have to get a judge’s order to make sure that all references to his DNA are gone,” she said.
The police say that the potential hazards of genetic surveillance are worth it because it solves crimes and because DNA is more accurate than other physical evidence. “I’ve watched women go from mug-book to mug-book looking for the man who raped her,” said Mitch Morrissey, the Denver district attorney and an advocate for more expansive DNA sampling. “It saves women’s lives.”
Mr. Morrissey pointed to Britain, which has fewer privacy protections than the United States and has been taking DNA upon arrest for years. It has a population of 61 million — and 4.5 million DNA profiles. “What you find is that about 8 percent of the people commit about 70 percent of your crimes, so if you can get the majority of that community, you don’t have to do more than that,” he said.
In the United States, 8 percent of the population would be roughly 24 million people.
Britain may provide a window into America’s genetic surveillance future: As of March 2008, 857,000 people in the British database, or about one-fifth, have no current criminal record. In December, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain’s practice of collecting DNA profiles from innocent people, including children as young as 10, violated international privacy protections.
Critics are also disturbed by the demographics of DNA databases, and again Britain’s example is instructive. According to a House of Commons report, 27 percent of black people and 42 percent of all black males are genetically registered, compared with 6 percent of white people.
As in Britain, expanding genetic sampling in the United States could exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, according to Hank Greely, a Stanford University Law School professor who studies the intersection of genetics, policing and race. Mr. Greely estimated that African-Americans, who are about 12 percent of the national population, currently make up 40 percent of the DNA profiles in the federal database, reflective of their prison population. He also expects Latinos, who are about 13 percent of the population and committed 40 percent of last year’s federal offenses — nearly half of them immigration crimes, including illegal entry — to dominate DNA databases.
Enforcement officials contend that DNA is blind to race. Federal profiles include little more information than the DNA sequence and the referring police agency. Subjects’ names are usually kept by investigators.
Rock Harmon, a former prosecutor for Alameda County, Calif., and an adviser to crime laboratories, said DNA demographics reflected the criminal population. Even if an innocent man’s DNA was included in a genetic database, he said, it would come to nothing without a crime scene sample to match it. “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear,” he said. ..News Source.. by SOLOMON MOORE
