Last week, the Massachusetts Judiciary Committee took up a bill proposed by a state senator that would explicitly allow law enforcement to use familial DNA searching in the investigation of violent cold cases.
Sen. Anne Gobi’s Bill S.2480 would task the director of the state crime laboratory with developing regulations to allow familial DNA searching in certain unsolved cases involving homicides, burglary and violent felonies. However, the bill does not ask law enforcement to mine third-party DNA website and companies to find familial matches. Rather, it covers databases containing DNA profiles from convicted offenders. If a partial (or full) match is found in one of those databases, law enforcement would legally be able to capitalize on the lead.
For example, perhaps the DNA of a convicted murderer is in one of those databases. If the murderer’s son committed a crime as well and left behind DNA, the son’s DNA could be run through the database and reveal a partial match to the father. Law enforcement would then have the grounds to bring in a suspect they could not identify previously.
Gobi told the Daily Hampshire Gazette that she filed the bill based on conversations with Heather Bish, whose sister Molly was 16 years old when she disappeared from her lifeguard post nearly 20 years ago. Molly Bish’s body was found in 2003, but her murder remains unsolved.
“The basic thing behind it is kind of going back to the Bish family,” Gobi told the newspaper. “They've hit every roadblock possible. They just don't know who the killer was, and there's other cases like that, so this would be an opportunity for police. It's really to be used when every other avenue has been exhausted.”
Indeed, law enforcement—even without specific laws—have turned to DNA databases as a last-ditch effort previously. Forensic genealogy’s biggest and most favorite DNA database, GEDmatch, has an “opt-in” policy that allows users to declare if they want their DNA available to law enforcement for crime-solving circumstances. Recently, a survey conducted Pew Research Organization revealed 48% of Americans surveyed approved of commercial DNA testing services, like Ancestry and 23andMe, providing customer DNA to law enforcement.
There likely will not be a conclusion on this bill as it was filed late. Most of the bills lawmakers will consider for the 2021 fiscal year were filed in January 2019, whereas Gobi filed her bill in January 2020. She told the newspaper her intent was to “at least get the bill out there.”