I think what Shodan is missing is this. In the scenario that described in my OP, there is no reason to think that the killer is a person in the neighborhood. The police have NO LEADS, after all. If they had reason to think the killer was a person in the neighborhood, they wouldn’t be doing the dragnet, which is guaranteed to be an enormous expenditure of resources and money.
never mind
This isn’t really a hypothetical question for me, and the answer is, I have. The sample was (or at least supposed to be) destroyed after testing and not kept in any database so I didn’t see any harm in it. Collecting the sample was done with a cotton swap in the mouth so it took less than a minute.
Of course this was in Sweden and maybe the swedish police is more trustworthy or (more likely) maybe us Swedes are more trusting.
Did they catch the guy? From the DNA?
Unfortunately no, it’s been almost five years and the murders are still unsolved.
It would be flimsy, if nobody with incriminating evidence in his possession had ever consented to a search. Nonetheless, it happens.
This is one of the parts I don’t believe. You are assuming the police are doing this dragnet with some motive other than catching the murderer. You seem to assume the police don’t really want to catch him; they would rather go after the innocent.
It’s only a hypothetical, so you can assume whatever you like. To me, it sounds pretty stupid.
Yes, that’s why the participation in the dragnet is voluntary. If the police had probable cause, they could investigate without the suspect’s consent.
Well, it’s not evidence-free, of course. Most murder victims know their attackers (cite, cite, etc.) But if you have no other evidence, you play the odds. Unless you are suggesting that when a child dies, the police should consider the parent to be no more likely a suspect that any of the other 300 million people in the USA. Because otherwise, that would be a horrible violation of their rights, correct?
So do I, which is why I have not said one single solitary word anywhere in the thread about making this mandatory. So you can send your strawman back to Oz.
It’s the same principle. The purpose of the dragnet is to narrow down the list of possible suspects from “everyone in the neighborhood” to “everyone in the neighborhood whose DNA does not rule them out”. In the same way, giving a description narrows it down from “everybody in the neighborhood” to “everybody in the neighborhood with a tattoo on his neck who weighs 250 and so forth”. If that narrows it down to one person, great, just as it would be great if the murderer is dumb enough to think his DNA won’t match and volunteers a sample. If nobody in the neighborhood matches that description, then your pool of suspects gets bigger. In the same way, if nobody in the neighborhood matches the DNA, and there is no other evidence that the police can find against anyone (including those who refused the dragnet, if any), then they are back to square one, just as in Mogle’s case.
But the police are going to investigate the hell out of anyone who might have been involved in the murder. Damn straight - that’s their job.
But there is no Constitutional right not to be investigated by the police. As long as the police do not violate the law in doing so, you got no kick coming. If the next door neighbor girl is murdered, and the police come knock knock knocking on my door and asking me what I was up to last Saturday night between five o’clock and midnight, my rights have not been violated. I don’t have to answer any questions any more than I have to submit my DNA. If they try to force me to do so, then that is different. But they are not - this is voluntary.
I would be stupid to talk to the police, if I were guilty, but guilty people talk to the police all the time. But if I were innocent, and last Saturday night between five o’clock and midnight I was at a church ice cream social with a hundred witnesses it would be kind of silly not to tell them. Because it saves the effort of investigating someone who had nothing to do with the crime. Same with the DNA - I submit a cheek swab and it shows that I do not match to the DNA of the murderer. I have equally reduced the pool of possible suspects by one.
I want the police to catch this murderer. Anything I can reasonably do to help, I will.
The police are not perfect, but they are not my enemy. In the vastly overwhelming majority of the time, they want what I want - catch the bad guy. Besides, I’ve got a daughter. She needs to be safe, and she isn’t, as long as this murderer still has access to my neighborhood.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not begbert2, but I don’t think this is his argument. The police aren’t doing the dragnet in the (faint) hope that a murderer smart/lucky enough to leave no leads wil be dumb enough to give them DNA evidence. The police are doing the dragnet with the sole intention of compiling a list of people who refuse to give a sample. And then focusing all their attention on the refusers.
In fact, suspicious as I am, and considering how expensive DNA testing on such a large scale is I’d bet they police wouldn’t even test all the samples. They’ll throw the lot in a freezer, just in case; but otherwise do nothing with most of them. The whole stated purpose of the dragnet is a lie, they are not eliminating you as a suspect since you were never really one in the first place. The police are building a list of suspects based entirely on their refusal to give a sample.
While I think that 99.9% of police officers genuinely want to catch the guilty and not frame the innocent, history shows that all too often police will focus on a suspect for fairly flimsy reasons and then work hard at convicting him by fair means or foul.
This is my thought as well. Seeing it verbalized so well makes me ask another question: Irrespective of the rightness or wrongess of the police’s motive’s here, is it not more prudent–in the short term–to give the sample? After all, by not doing so you are opening yourself up to harassment and suspicion, and though you have every right to do so on constitutional grounds, you will still likely end up paying a price for it.
For instance: let’s say the 10 out of 1,000 persons requested to do to decline to give samples. The police take their 9,990 samples, toss the lot of them in the freezer, and then concentrate on you and the other nine refusers. They begin following you toand from work; they put a tap on your phone; they attempt to get access to your bank account records; and so forth. Becoming aware of this, you hire an attorney to try to stop it. Even assuming you win your case, you are going to be out attorney’s fees, which can quickly grow onerous. You aren’t going to get those back, are you? Likewise, you are likely to suffer the suspicion and resentment of your neighbors. If you live in an employment-at-will state and your boss gets wind of it, you may find yourself with a pink slip. Your kids may find themselves getting harassed by other kids in the neighborhood…and so forht.
Please note that I’m not saying the police should use the DNA dragnet as an investigative technique or that I would want to give a sample. But there are going to be short-term personal costs to refusing, unless almost everyone does so.
Also (and here I have a question for the lawyers): if the police begin surveiling someone as I suggest above, and discover evidence of another crime, would such evidence be admissable?
As mentioned, criminals do dumb things all the time - consenting to searches, answering questions, giving false alibis instead of keeping quiet - all kinds of stuff. I can certainly envision some clown thinking he is home free because he wore a condom when he raped the little girl and forgetting that he dropped a cigarette on the front porch.
But fine - assume all those who refuse the test do so either because they are convinced civil libertarians, or guilty. And the police are going to concentrate on the refusers.
Again, so what? There is nothing about being a suspect that inherently violates your right to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
That’s an interesting idea that I hadn’t considered. But still, so what?
Well, that’s fine, but it isn’t going to work. I have the trump card of the DNA test that proves I’m innocent. Some crooked cop decides to frame me, all I gotta do is ask for the results of the DNA test. If they did the test, that clears me and I have a nice fat lawsuit for false arrest. If they didn’t, I get a court order forcing them to either do the test, or publicly announce that I am innocent and they tried to frame me. And a nice fat lawsuit to boot.
Without a court order? How do they do that?
Regards,
Shodan
An interesting overview of genetic fingerprinting based on a local (to me) case.
Some here seem to think that DNA fingerprinting is a case of identifying the murderer vs anyone else. What actually happens is that general families or genetic traits are narrowed down to see if there are any promising leads, such as whether said suspect lived in the same area at the time of the crime.
Of course, by volunteering, you’re placing your own family in the firing line, even cousins several times removed who you don’t even know. Certainly an excellent way to start a Christmas argument.
I don’t think he meant that- I think what he meant is that the Police know that the murderer is not going to volunteer. So, they will do exactly as suggested- look more heavily at those that do not volunteer. But that would be shoddy police work, as they are making a HUGE and unwarranted assumption.
Yes, murderers usually know their victim. But that doesn’t mean they live in the same neighborhood. Maybe they know the victim from work, school or church. Or maybe they live in the next neighborhood over. Once you get out of the house the victim is killed in, the chances it’s someone in THAT neighborhood is not all that great.
Indeed you are right- the resident *of that house *are suspects. But unless the DNA evidence is something like a semen deposit- then the other residents of that house would be expected to have their DNA all over everywhere. And yes, of course you can get DNA samples here, any Judge would be happy to issue an order.
So the “Unless you are suggesting that when a child dies, the police should consider the parent to be no more likely a suspect that any of the other 300 million people in the USA” idea is a strawman. The police can get a court order for the parent or the other household members. But the police can not get a court order for just random dudes living in that neighborhood, there’s no probable cause.
I really doubt if any real Police force would try to get the DNA from the whole neighborhood anyway. If they did, it would be only to show they are doing something, not as a real chance they will catch the killer this way.
This would be totally illegal. And in fact,as shown here, more like 50% would refuse. In any case, there is no evidence the killer is someone from that neighborhood.
Heck no, for the reasons others have given.
Criminals stupidly consent to searches because they don’t know any better. I do, so I have no excuse to allow the police to collect evidence from me as though I were a criminal.
The sad part is that people have such a murky view of their civil rights that they think they should be participating in this kind of bullshit, allowing police to get convictions (remember, their job is to find a suspect and get him convicted- the truth is a separate issue) while still participating in slipshod investigating that uses tactics that violate the spirit, if not (fortunately for them) the letter of the constitution.
I realize that at least some of what I suggested the police would do would be illegal, and I agree that there is no evidence the killer is from the neighborhood. (In fact, I’d argue that the dearth of evidence argues against the killer being from the neighborhood; it implies intelligence, foresight, and careful execution of the crime, and such a criminal would not be likely to choose a victim from the neighborhood in which he or she lived.) But the illegality of the actions does not mean that the police would not perform them, nor that many persons would not support them. An argument might be made that any single non-guilty individual is better off providing the sample in the short run, even though society, as a whole, is better off if no one does unless the police have probable cause (and thus a warrant).
Often they do. Cite.
This is in reference to children abducted and killed by a stranger - cite (PDF).
Like I said, if you have no other evidence, you have to play the odds.
Regards,
Shodan
What about the suspect’s residence, which is actually what we’re considering here?
I am not assuming the dragnet would be confined only to those living in the neighborhood, but those “in the neighborhood” - i.e. those who work there, or spend time there for whatever reason. If that is what you are asking.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, this is one of those things that worries me from time to time. Are criminals overwhelmingly stupid? Or are we so bad at catching criminals that we only get the really stupid ones?
My knowledge of American law is a bit primitive but don’t you have at least some right to be considered innocent from the police and other government actors? The police cannot pull you over for no reason, ask you to submit to a voluntary search, and then use your refusal as an indication of guilt that lets them search involuntarily, correct? That seems an analogous situation to the DNA dragnet in my eyes. You have a right to privacy, or at least against unreasonable searches and seizures.
But what is the point of having those rights if exercising them results in you being considered a suspect? Becoming the focus of an investigation purely for exercising your rights undercuts the entire point of having those rights in the first place. Even if you don’t consider not giving the government your DNA sample a good thing in and of itself, thwarting these kinds of attempts to nullify your rights by refusing to go along voluntarily helps keep the rights alive for when you really need them yourself.
Well, a negative result on a DNA test certainly helps your case. But if you are charged and a DNA test can help clear you, you can do one then. Of course if the police/prosecutor are really out to get you it doesn’t prove your innocence anyway, all it means is that you have (at least one) unindicted co-conspirator! Getting a false arrest suit seems like it’d be more difficult than just getting a negative match.
As a matter of fact, I think they are.
Correct. You have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. You do not have the right not to be a suspect. The police may not use the refusal to consent to a search as the basis for a search.
Put it this way - the police cannot do anything they couldn’t do if there were no DNA dragnet at all. On the other hand, they can still do anything they could do if there were no DNA dragnet at all. Nothing has changed, whether they do the dragnet and you refuse, or if they don’t do the dragnet. You haven’t lost any of your rights. They can’t tap your phone, open your mail, force you to answer questions, search your house, or anything else.
Or I can do one right off the bat when they ask me, and spare everyone the trouble. Then they can concentrate on looking for the guilty guy.
That’s one of the problems with these scenarios - they get progressively more far-fetched. Now we have not only a rogue cop who cares more about clearing the case than catching the guilty, but a DA who is trying to frame one of the people in the case who not only has not one scrap of evidence against him, but incontrovertible proof that he is not the guy.
This isn’t a scenario; it’s a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
Regards,
Shodan
As I stated in my first post here, by my refusal I expect to be bringing hell down on myself. That’s the whole point of the dragnet - to scare people into voluntarily giving up their rights. It’s got all the perks of a police state without any of the stigma!
So, the dragnet is a lie? It’s basically entrapment for doing somthing that isn’t a crime (refusing the voluntary dragnet), and using it as the sole justification for making you the target of a focussed, aggressive police investigation.
Um, they’ll only focus on the people who don’t give them a DNA sample for that freezer. So yeah, there are no results to ask for.
They get a court order. Now that you’re only one of eleven people that they need to focus on, and have incriminated yourself by denying the dragnet and thus proving that you have something to hide, they will be all over you like a dog on a bone. Everybody does something suspicious in some regard; everybody makes little mistakes in their stories that leave their ‘alibi’ full of holes. In no time at all the police will be able to scrape up reasonable suspicion to justify a warrant. (Or they’ll just take DNA off you at a restraunt or something without you noticing.)
Personally, if I were a cop, I’d try to leverage this up until a court order for a forced DNA sample - after all, you just demonstrated that you thought you had a reason to hide it. How could that not be a huge step towards justifiable cause? (This is assuming I couldn’t just get some DNA by following you around and picking up after you.)
And thus, the voluntary dragnet becomes a required dragnet - some do it vouluntarily first, and the rest do it involuntarily after. And it’s cheaper, because you only test the samples of the involuntary ones.
Unless too many people refuse to participate to make the new fabricated suspect pool small enough to investigate effectively. And thus, I do my civic duty to protect the rights of the innocent, at the risk that not enough people will do the same to protect me from becoming one of those I wish to protect.