DNA is one of the most powerful tools of modern crime-fighting — but New York lawmakers have been reluctant to let law-enforcement officials use its full potential.
Police now routinely gather DNA evidence at crime scenes, or from such violent crimes as rape. If a perp’s DNA is “on file” in a DNA database, law enforcers can rapidly identify and apprehend a criminal before he strikes again.
In other words, building the database is vital. But it doesn’t have to include every one to be effective: Other states’ experiences show that a database of significant numbers of career criminals — habitual lawbreakers, including minor as well as major offenses — is hugely valuable.
The federal government leads the way, requiring a DNA sample upon arrest, while 20-plus states require DNA sampling of all suspects arrested for violent felonies. But in Albany, a bill mandating DNA sampling upon arrest is mired in debate in the Senate and was pronounced dead on arrival in the Assembly.
New York requires DNA sampling only of those convicted of a felony and a few sex-related misdemeanors — which leaves most criminals still exempt after conviction. As a result, the state DNA databank is too small to be effective, holding “fingerprints” of only about 15 percent of the criminal population.
That’s why 20,000 DNA forensic profiles, retrieved from New York crime scenes, are languishing unmatched. The unsolved crimes range from robbery and burglary to rape and murder.
Legislative gridlock has deprived New York’s law enforcement of this potentially powerful tool. In what’s now an annual ritual, the Assembly is again considering only a minor expansion of the state’s DNA database.
In 2006, the Legislature yielded to a decade of pressure and passed a significant expansion of the DNA databank. But since the state still only mandates DNA sampling for certain convictions, the majority of known criminals still get to maintain their “DNA anonymity.”
Yet even that expansion made a big difference. In New York, from 1994 to 2007, DNA put a name on 4,142 crime-scene samples. About a third of these matches were in 2007 alone, the first year after DNA sampling was expanded. In 2008 and 2009, the cumulative total of hits rose to 7,980 — an incredible 300 percent jump in crime-scene matches over the whole preceding decade.
The debate on privacy is over. State and federal courts have rejected challenges to mandatory-sampling laws, because DNA from a saliva swab is merely a biological fingerprint revealing only a person’s identity.
Here are a few terrifying examples of how shielding violent offenders from providing DNA allowed them to prey on innocent victims:
* John Royster’s conviction for turnstile jumping in Manhattan was too minor to take his DNA. But if that conviction had required a DNA sample, Royster would’ve been arrested three months later, after his first rape. Instead, DNA anonymity gave him the opportunity to rape three more women, leaving two permanently brain-damaged. The third died.
* Isaac Jones waged a reign of terror in New York City, raping and attacking women. He wasn’t apprehended for six years because an earlier conviction didn’t require a DNA sample.
* Chester Dewayne Turner, arrested in Los Angeles for assault with a firearm, was set free for lack of evidence. No DNA was taken. Over the next 15 years, he was arrested 21 times before his DNA was taken. It matched the DNA evidence found on 12 rape-murder victims.
These women were victims of preventable crimes. If Turner’s DNA had been taken, 11 of his murder victims might be alive today. They were attacked and killed because of restrictions on taking DNA. (See dnasaves.org for more heartbreaking cases.) Also, David Jones, the man wrongfully convicted of three of these murders, would not have served 11 years in prison.
Twenty thousand stalkers are operating in New York under a shield of anonymity. It’s time to take DNA after all convictions. Better yet, to provide swift justice for the guilty and innocent alike, the legislature should follow the feds and take DNA upon arrest. Legislators insist it’s only a matter of time before restrictions are lifted. They should do it now. When it comes to restricting DNA, delay is deadly.
Gerald J. Turetsky is chairman of the Committee on Civil and Criminal Justice.