Published: April 9, 2006
In an effort to protect the privacy of criminals, New York statutes place severe restrictions on DNA use as a crime-fighting tool. Whether we continue or eliminate these restrictions is of life and death importance for New Yorkers.
New York State greatly improved its DNA analysis and processing system as part of the effort to identify remains of the victims of 9/11. But although this system has incalculable potential to solve crime, New York has opted for DNA privacy over safety. The result: legal restrictions shield even the most dangerous offenders from DNA identification and apprehension, extending their violent careers indefinitely.
A case in point: New York has spent millions of federal dollars to eliminate backlogs in processing DNA rape kits. In 2003, about 17,000 rape files produced more than 15,000 DNA profiles of rapists, including serial rapists and murderers. State legislation now permits many of these violent offenders to be charged under ''John Doe'' DNA profile indictments, a necessary innovation to prevent criminals from running out the clock under the statute of limitations. This need for the ''John Doe'' indictments results from the police's inability, due to privacy concerns, to take DNA at the time of arrest.
The way the system works now, no matter how many times these rapists (16,000 or more at last count) are arrested for other crimes, most will not be tied to their rapes and murders because they typically plead only to ''nondesignated'' charges, and state law does not require criminals to give DNA samples for convictions in these cases. Most will serve short sentences and be released to continue their mayhem simply because their DNA isn't in the state DNA databank.
The argument in favor of protecting DNA privacy of people who commit crimes, whether felonies or misdemeanors, is illusory. The saliva swab sampling takes a microscopic amount of DNA, called junk DNA; like a fingerprint, it can be matched to an individual, but it doesn't provide biological information. Civil liberties advocates and lawyers who defend criminals have prevented an expansion of the state DNA databank by arguing the junk DNA sample can somehow divulge other protected information. Scientists have concluded that this is untrue.
Of the 633,000 sets of fingerprints that have been provided by arrestees, about two-thirds belonged to people who had prior convictions. Yet only 18,000 DNA samples (less than 5 percent) were taken from these prior offenders. Even more disturbing, more than 50 percent of those convicted of felonies and 94 percent of those convicted of misdemeanors after arrest are still excluded from DNA sampling.
New York's DNA index is one of the most restricted in the nation. When compared with the state fingerprint databank of 3.3 million, the DNA index probably includes fewer than 10 percent of the state's criminal offenders. That's why it took New York 10 years to achieve the same result that Britain's unrestricted DNA database gets every 10 days -- about 1,700 ''hits'' or DNA matches.
If New York, like Britain, required a DNA sample of saliva upon arrest, as it does with fingerprints, a large number of fugitive serial rapists and murderers would be identified. Arming police with DNA, now widely accepted as the state-of-the art fingerprint of the 21st century, this powerful investigative tool would spare thousands of potential victims each year. It would also quickly exonerate those wrongly accused or convicted of crimes.
Albany's continued failure to remove restraints on DNA sampling has resulted in thousands of people needlessly becoming victims, like those of the serial rapist and murderer John Royster. Mr. Royster's brutal eight-day rampage in June 1996 in the metropolitan area ended, the police say, only after three attacks and a murder. (He was eventually convicted of two brutal assaults and one murder.) If his conviction three months earlier for a misdemeanor for jumping a turnstile had required a DNA sample, three of his victims could probably have been saved.
Gerald J. Turetsky is the chairman of the committee on civil and criminal justice at the Respect for Law Alliance.
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