Indicting DNA instead of people

Great Debates
21

I disagree.

John Smith
123 Fake Street
Springfield, USA
SSN# 123-45-6789

Is a heck of a lot more specific, or at least, is a heck of a lot more useful in identifying the person. These DAs are going on a fishing expedition, hoping that someday in the future they’ll stumble blindly across the criminal, and they don’t want that pesky little LAW to get in their way. I say they haven’t identified anyone since, if they ever get a match, you can bet they’d be saying “We finally know who committed this crime.”

22

Now this is just plain silly. Of course DNA is a better way of identifying an offender than their name, aka, most recent address, or even their social security number. There is no “fishing” expedition, they know PRECISELY who they are looking for, much more precisely than a name or a fake address. The mere fact that it is not readily identifiable goes to the likelihood of arrest, not whether they have the right guy or not. So get off the high horse and try and deal with the facts.

23

Unless he gave a phony name and address to the police or to the victim.
And these quotes

from the link pretty much say " We finally know who committed this crime"- but adds “we can’t do anything without it”

Although I would prefer eliminating the statute of limitations for rape rather than using these John Doe indictments, that only works for rapes committed after the SOL is eliminated.

Question for the lawyers- How different is a John Doe indictment from a silent indictment ? Or is it just a particular type of silent indictment? Is there a time limit for an arrest on a silent indictment?

24

This site has some interesting info about the status of bills being passed in various states that extends the statute of limitations for sex crimes and other crimes when DNA evidence is obtained. The scariest one is from Cheesesteaks home state, Pennsylvania, which states:

“Extends the period of limitation in certain offenses when DNA evidence establishes the identity of an assailant.”

DNA evidence cannot establish the identity of an assailant. As someone pointed out above, it gives a probability of identity between the suspect and the actual perpetrator. This came up in the OJ trial, where the drops of blood were stated to be a 99% match to OJ. That sounds pretty incriminating until you realize that only narrows it down to a few hundred thousand people in the LA area. The one thing that DNA can irrefutably do is eliminate a person as a suspect. Barry Sheck and the Innocence Project are doing just that, setting free people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes, usually black men convicted of rape.

25

They’re not LOOKING for anybody! They’re waiting for the person to show up in the computer via nothing other than pure, unadulterated luck. They’ve had 10 years to find these people and have nothing but a cold, dead, case. What do they know about these criminals other than a chart with some lines on it? They know exactly nothing.

They are trolling the waters just like a fisherman. Put the charts out there on the line, and wait… Eventually one of these 600 guys will be DNA tested and he’s hooked! All they’re doing with this is making sure they can keep these lures in the water longer.

The Bloomberg quote is telling. The way the law is set up, the guy gets off. That’s the way this law works, if you don’t start the process before the decade is up, he gets off. Maybe that’s not a nice thing to think about, but it is exactly how the law was designed to work. They ARE changing the law, at a glacial pace, but the law on the books when the crimes were committed lets these guys get off.

BTW, Roger, I’m a New Yorker, even though I love Philly’s signature sandwich.

26

I think it highly probable that another, and certainly more minor, reason for the continued existance of the SofL is that Americans, however much we deny it or admit that it is wrong, have something of a romance going with the guy who pulls off the big caper and gets away. Witness almost any heist film ever made in the US (The Sting, The Great Train Robbery, The Usual Suspects. We have a weird split between our Protestant cutural roots and the culture of lawlessness that we identify with some much that defines who we are: we claim to be a democracy ruled by everyone were everyone’s opinion matters (a pretty lawless idea, see the worries of some of the founding fathers re: mob rule), the expansion west led by trappers and farmers lving by choice outside of the law and becoming our folk heroes, hell, the founding fathers were a bunch of treasonous rich kids from the point of view of the British king(and last I checked we still theoretically execute people for treason).

So, part of the reason that the SofL exists is because really deep down, if we had the guts, we’d like to do the deed (usually this fantasy revolves around a bank robbery) and get away with it.

I’m not saying by any means that rapist should be allowed to escape unpunished when they’ve been accurately identified, especially in such a difinitve way. But there sort of an undercurrent of American opinion that says "if you’re smart enough to get away with it and can lie low without getting caught for long enough you should not only be allowed to walk away, you should be congratulated. We feel like it’s only fair. Which really doesn’t make any sense, but when’s the last time we let making sense get in the way of anything?

27

Look, I’ve tried to be polite, but this deliberate obtuseness is getting pretty annoying. These indictments are for a specific person, with a very specific DNA profile. They are not “fishing” or trying to create something from a “cold, dead, case,” they are looking for the offender. Now, stay with me here if you can: THEY KNOW WHO DID IT!!! They know the guy who raped the woman or committed the crime, they just don’t know his name or how to identify him, but they know him. They haven’t caught him yet, and they don’t have any leads on how to catch him, but they do have an identifiable guy. They’ve identified him, but they haven’t caught him. Just like the hundreds of thousands of other criminals out there who they haven’t caught yet.

28

Boy, the logic on that one is doubleplusungood comrade. Maybe you should read what you’re putting down before you start yelling at other people for being obtuse.

29

Sorry Hamlet you are the one being obtuse. You obviously don’t know anything about DNA “fingerprinting.” All the police have is a glob of semen or a hair collected from a crime scene. The extract the DNA and chemically break it into fragments and analyze them which gives them a pattern of spots on a gel. If the police collected DNA from everybody in the USA and ran the same test, they would get about a million people who would give a pattern of spots so similar that they could not be ruled out as suspects. The cops need a hell of a lot of corroborating evidence to convict someone of a crime. DNA evidence is not sufficient, and does not absolutely identify a suspect as the perpetrator.

So stop being acutely obtuse and inform yourself before you start insulting people.

30

That kind of “knowing” doesn’t seem very useful, since they can’t go collecting DNA samples from everyone until they get a match. He could walk right into the police station to use the men’s room and walk right out, without anyone ever knowing it was him.

It’s like indicting “man with a pacemaker, serial #1234567”. You can use that information after you catch him to make sure you have the right guy, but you can’t just open up everyone in town and read the serial numbers on their pacemakers.

31

I look at it this way, your DNA is for all intents and purposes YOUR NAME. The string of letters that appears on your birth certificate is an arbitrary way of identifying someone.

Saying that DNA profile GJFKDAJFDKSA (note: completely made up, farsical string of letters) is accused of a crime is in some ways even more accurate than saying John Smith committed a crime

Names can change. Addresses can change. Your height or weight might change. But from the day you are born until the day you die, you will be DNA profile GJFKDAJFDKSA

32

Certainly… there are fewer people who match that DNA profile than people with a certain name, or even a certain face. DNA is better than a name or a photo for verifying someone’s identity.

But a name and a photo are leads; you can go around the area and ask people “Have you ever met someone named John Smith?” or “Have you ever seen the man in this photo?”, whereas DNA is completely worthless until you’ve already found the perp through other means. If there are no other means, you’ll never find him.

33

This might be true if a complete DNA profile is taken. I’m not sure that is what a DNA profile is though. Often only sample sequences are taken and then identification becomes a matter of probabilities. I.e. it is highly unlikely that someone else having the same sample sequence would also have ties to the crime.

Would this DNA database be a complete sequence for everyone?

34

I’m tryin’ to look at this from a legal standpoint.

If Cheesesteak, for example, goes out and knocks over a bank, precisely how is he leaving his DNA lying around? Dandruff, perhaps?

Any lawyer with half a brain would simply say that of the hundreds of people in and out of the bank that week, how many had dandruff? Perhaps Cheesesteak was in that bank on legitimate business, the day before. His DNA is on the money? It becomes the prosecution’s job to prove that Cheesesteak didn’t actually HAVE that money a week ago, spent it on perfectly legitimate things, and it wound up at the bank through normal circulation of currency.

The bottom line here is that until DNA testing gets a LOT more effective, and FAR better methodologies are developed for tying it to a variety of crimes, trying to convict Cheesesteak of a bank robbery on DNA evidence is going to be a big joke. Therefore, indicting him on DNA evidence is idiotic.

On the other hand, let’s assume that a woman has been raped. She wishes to press charges against her rapist. Well, the culprit has left a pretty substantial DNA sample behind, in the usual manner, and it’s a pretty safe bet that aside from HER DNA, there isn’t anyone ELSE’s in there.

Plainly, the sample belongs to the culprit. Why, then, should the system NOT simply indict “Suspect John Doe, with DNA template #00817263-thus-and-such?”

Legally, I can’t see anything wrong with it. We’ve already established that DNA evidence is admissable for identification purposes.

The DOWN side would involve that “national DNA database” everyone has mentioned… but how is that any different from the fingerprint database we already have? Sure, I’d object if the government demanded the fingerprints of every taxpayer… but they don’t.

And they’ll get my DNA when they pry it from my cold dead fingers, thank you very much…

35

This is a big misconception operating in this discussion. It is true that every individual has a unique sequence of codons in their DNA. If you knew that sequence A to Z you could uniquely identify a person by their DNA, like a serial number. DNA fingerprinting used by forensic scientists is very far from DNA sequencing. DNA fingerprinting is like grinding up a car and sorting out the pieces according to size in order to identify the make and model of a car. DNA fingerprinting is extremely crude. DNA fingerprinting CANNOT and I REPEAT CANNOT give the precise identity of a criminal who has left behind DNA evidence. It can give you the likelihood of a match. Its best use is in exculpatory evidence, as it can tell you that a suspect was NOT the perpetrator, based on the mismatch.

Cheesesteak was right from the beginning, this whole idea is bogus and unconstitutionally vague. By indicting the DNA, the DA is in fact indicting thousands of people, and that will not fly. I will be very surprised if the Supreme Court does not overturn this eventually, when we get rid of all the right wing judicial activists.

36

I am not going to take sides here as it is a complex issue but there is something to be taken into account which, I think, is the purpose of the Statutes of Limitations. Let us assume DNA is infallible. Now, today I am notified that DNA matching mine was recovered 19 years ago from a rape victim. I know full well I didn’t do it because I have never raped anyone in my life. If the accusation was for something that happened 3 years ago my capacity to defend myself would be much greater. I would have more information, witnesses, proofs, etc. but as time goes by I lose information, lose track of possible witnesses, etc. As time goes by my capacity to defend myself decreases while the chances that there will be a mixup with the DNA evidence increase. One of the purposes of the SofL is to prevent this from happening. I believe the SofL talks about indictment date but in reality it should also set a trial date. Maybe the tring to do would be to add a year to all the time periods but talk of trial rather than indictment.

Another way of dealing with this is to allow trails in absentia (which I believe are not legal in the USA but legal in Europe). The trial is advertised and takes place whether the defendant shows up or not. If the defendant does not show up he forfeits his right to defend himself. The trial takes place anyway and judgment is issued. It can be argued that a trial shortly after the crime took place can better judge what happened and if the accused chose not to defend himself, that is his problem.

37

Another example would be photographic evidence. You could argue that a photograph uniquely identifies a person. What if I had a grainy out of focus photo and used it to indict all white males about 5 feet tall with long hair? That would never fly and is the equivalent of indicting the DNA.

The solution to this insanity is to remove the statute of limitations for sex crimes, hang on to the evidence, and indict a human being when there is sufficient evidence. Sex crimes, like murder, should have no statute of limitations. The flip side is you have to eliminate the death penalty, to allow time for exulpatory DNA evidence to exonerate wrongfully convicted people. I agree with Dan Burton on this one (and also removing J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI bldg.)

38

I don’t think he is being obtuse at all. You both have made good points; no reason to get huffy.

39

The whole thing seems a bit sketchy to me. As other folks have pointed out, a DNA profile is a peculiar kind of knowledge. Gosh, the DA might be indicting himself and not even know it.

Anyway, as others said, legislatures should just extend the statute of limitations for rape. 10 years might have made sense before modern technologies became available, but not so much anymore.

40

I’m not trying to be obtuse, I’m just saying that DNA isn’t really an identifier, it’s evidence. As an analogy, it’s like saying a random house key identifies a house. It might be a great piece of evidence, but it’s not the same as using an address to identify a house. Yes, you can stick the key in every house in the country until it works, but saying the key identifies the house is a bit much.