MINORITY REPORT

DNA Search In 'Grim Sleeper' Arrest Is Whole Nother Kind Of Scary

By Elizabeth C.

A GREAT THING HAPPENED IN CALIFORNIA YESTERDAY: A suspected serial murderer accused of killing 10 people was arrested. Hurray!

The bad news: he was fingered using DNA collected from his son when he was arrested in California, where the law allows police to collect DNA from suspects before they're convicted of a crime. And that's a whole nother kind of scary.

Lonnie Franklin Jr., a 57-year-old retired Los Angeles mechanic, was arrested on suspicion that he killed 10 women and one man in a series of murders dating back to 1988. The crime spree had been dubbed the work of the "Grim Sleeper" because the murderer took a 14-year hiatus between his earlier and later attacks. Franklin was a frequent customer of sex workers in the South Los Angeles neighborhood where he lived.

Community activists and victims’ family members are ebullient over the arrest, but civil libertarians are uneasy about the method used to tag Franklin for the crimes.

Police snagged Franklin after DNA he left at a crime scene was partially matched to a sample taken from his son arrested in an unrelated felony. Published reports say Franklin’s DNA "lit up like a Christmas tree."

In California, police collect DNA samples from anyone charged with a crime even though approximately a third of them will never be convicted, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is challenging that practice, arguing that it subjects thousands of innocent Californians “to a lifetime of genetic surveillance because a single police officer suspected them of a crime." The state has the third-largest database of DNA material in the world, behind Britain and the FBI.

"This arrest provides proof positive that familial DNA searches must be a part of law enforcement's crime-fighting arsenal,'' said California's attorney general Jerry Brown. "Although the adoption of this new state policy was unprecedented and controversial, in certain cases, it is the only way to bring a dangerous killer to justice."

”We're right in the midst of a massive crime-lab experiment in DNA collection,’’ writes MSNBC’s Science Editor Alan Boyle who points out that every state allows DNA samples to be taken from convicted felons. “But California is just one of the 23 states that require DNA for felony arrests. Congress and several states, including New York and North Carolina, are currently talking about widening their DNA collection programs to cover arrests as well as convictions.”

The full long-term implications of such draconian policies are still unclear. But you don’t have to look too deeply to see that the practice gives police the power to perform biological searches of the gene pool without a suspect’s explicit permission. Doesn’t that violate our fundamental Constitutional right to illegal search and seizure? Let me know your thoughts. And stay tuned for more.