The DNA Connection

You can’t look at the advent of next generation DNA sequencing, the speed at which the technology is advancing, and the rate at which the cost is dropping and—with any intellectual honesty—suggest that the forensic use of DNA is going to continue with blinders to anything phenotypic.

Efforts focusing on the protection and exoneration of the innocent through DNA technology in two countries may help bring about safer and more just societies.

On July 30th of this year, the constitutional question of arrestee DNA testing came a lot closer to getting resolved. It appears that King may well be the case upon which the Court determines whether law enforcement can take a biological sample from an individual arrested for, but not yet convicted of a crime.

Every now and then it seems that there are markers in the historical timeline of our continuing efforts to drive the utilization of DNA technology toward its ultimate capacity to solve and ultimately prevent crime.

A dynamic fairly unique to the U.S. system of justice is the extensive impact that victim advocacy has on policy, legislation, and funding.

DNA-Prokids provides an example that we possess the technology, the resources, and most importantly, the will to fight back hard against the some of the worst nature and human nature has to offer.

Seven years ago, the decision was made to include in a DNA database those individuals identified as being in the United States illegally. A brilliant idea for several reasons.

R-DNA testing, when fully implemented and integrated into CODIS, will be the most transformational event in the use of forensic DNA since the advent of PCR.

It’s more than a little ironic that the week before the DNA of Ted Bundy, one of America’s most notorious serial killers, is entered into a DNA database, the First Appellate Court in California has ruled its arrestee database to be unconstitutional.

As long as rape kit backlogs are part of our current events stories rather than our historical retrospectives, I think it important to occasionally point out how far we have to go.