Watching 60 Minutes the other night I found myself thinking the laws of the British are superior to the laws of the United States where it comes to the issue of DNA database searches. The British do what they call “familial searches” rather than simply searching for exact matches. In Rotherham they used this type of searching to find a rapist who they’d been after for twenty years called the “shoe rapist”, thereby finally putting a guilty man behind bars for the crimes he committed against many women. Unfortunately in the U.S. the only searches done are for exact matches.

To my mind, and I’m sure to many others in this country, the ability to remove dangerous criminals from the streets is worth a lot. I mean, really, who wants their daughter, sister, mother, or close friend raped and possibly murdered because the FBI won’t divulge the information as to who might be related to the perpetrator in order to protect them from being investigated?
Some out there, like the ACLU and apparently attorney Steven Mercer, who went on record on 60 Minutes with his opinions, fight against it. They claim to be protecting the rights of the innocent, but are they really? Or are they protecting the rights of the criminals over the rights of the victims for justice and the rights of future victims from being attacked?
After all, if someone has been incarcerated and their DNA stored on the FBI database their DNA can be pulled up in the event they commit another crime, right? Without doubt that is simply a matter of using all information available to them not unlike using fingerprints. So, why do some fight against the ability to do familial searches in the U.S.? Mercer says, on the 60 Minutes interview, “With this new technology, no one has ever considered, ‘Well, if my brother’s DNA ends up in the database, and he’s forfeited his privacy rights by becoming a convicted felon, has he also forfeited my privacy rights, as well, as a wholly innocent family member’. That puts me under lifelong surveillance.”
According to information given during the 60 Minutes show, criminologists know that crime tends to run in families. As a matter of fact, 51 percent of people incarcerated have a family member who has also been incarcerated. With statistics like that, does it seem as though a lot of innocent people are in danger of being investigated for crimes they didn’t commit? Maybe. But are they in danger of going to prison for crimes they didn’t commit when DNA is involved? Not likely, as to convict with DNA it needs to be an exact match.
I agree with what I heard District Attorney of Denver, Colorado, Mitch Morrissey say on the subject, “These are important scientific leads that need to be run down. And the fact that we can’t run them down in this country I think is shameful.” Of course part of his reasoning, as he also said on 60 Minutes is “Let me give you an example. Say we have a hit and run accident where someone was killed. And we have witnesses that say, ‘This is the color of the car. This is the style of the car. But I only got the first three license plate numbers’… Only a partial. What should the police do? Just say, ‘Oh no, it’s only partial, so we’re not gonna do anything.’ Or should they go to your motor vehicle database and they may talk to 20 people that weren’t involved in the accident at all. And I’ll tell ya, most of those people are gonna tell ya, ‘Thanks for looking into this,. Because we hope you solve the case.”
Looking at his example you can see that many people could be questioned regarding a hit and run for no other reason than that the license plate issued to them by their state is similar to the one on the car driven by someone who committed the crime. This analogy can also be taken further if you think along the lines of someone who let a friend or family member drive their car and then the car was involved in a hit and run. The owner of the car did nothing wrong, however, they could be charged with the crime unless they give the police the name of the actual perpetrator. Here is yet another way in which an innocent person can find themselves under investigation. Do you think the police should do nothing in the case where they don’t have a complete license plate, description of the car, and of the driver?
If they are going to limit DNA searches due to the fact that some people might be inconvenienced by the investigation, where will that end? Next will they be stopping the police from distributing composite sketches to the media because they might resemble some innocent person, thereby keeping people from spotting the right one, along with many of the wrong ones? And, how about researching the license plate numbers as DA Morrissey mentioned on 60 Minutes? When will they decide that it is unfair to the innocent people with similar license numbers so therefore it shouldn’t be investigated unless they have the complete number? Or fingerprints? What about all those people whose fingerprints are similar to the perpetrator of a crime and they are investigated? From what I understand a fingerprint specialist can determine someone is guilty from a 10 point match, and that my friends is not an exact match as I believe the FBI requires a 13 point match. From this you may realize that my point is that many people have been investigated for crimes on a lot slimmer possible connection than that they had a close match on DNA, and many convicted. With DNA the requirements for a match are much more strenuous than with a fingerprint, which limits wrongful convictions and will protect many more innocent people from the predators out there.