A legislative study today at the State Capitol made the case for allowing law enforcement to collect the DNA of suspect upon their felony arrest.
The study was requested by state Rep. Lee Denney, who ran legislation during the 2014 legislative session to allow the collection of DNA upon arrest during the investigation of a felony-level crime. House Bill 2638 failed to gain the necessary support in the House.
“The failure of the legislation showed that I needed to make a stronger case to my colleagues,” said Denney, R-Cushing. “Specifically, we tried to show the need for the collection of DNA upon arrest and address the privacy concerns that many Oklahomans have when they hear about the proposed law.”
Jayann Sepich, the mother of a murder victim and co-founder of DNA Saves, gave the initial presentation during the study. She noted the case of a California man who had been arrested 21 times over the course of 15 years without DNA being taken. He was eventually linked to numerous crimes during that time period. A case study by the City of Chicago showed that 53 rapes and murders eventually connected to eight convicts would have been prevented if their DNA had been collected upon their first felony arrest.
In California, an average of 10 crimes are solved every day due to DNA collection upon arrest, she said.
She noted that DNA databases exonerate the innocent, help law enforcement to catch those responsible and prevent crimes from occurring by speeding up the investigation process.
“This doesn’t take away our freedom, it enhances our freedom,” Sepich said during her presentation.
The killer of her daughter, Katie, was caught, but could have been caught 3 years earlier had his DNA been taken upon arrest, she said.
“A family needs justice to heal,” she said.
Sepich also noted that the particular method of DNA collection used for the purposes of the law do not provide medical information on an individual, but simply markers that prove their identity.
“One of the concerns we have run into is that there are misconceptions of how a person’s DNA could be misused,” Denney said. “The truth is that the DNA profile generated does not contain genetic information about an individual. It can only help law enforcement identify a person.”
Andrea Sweich, Division Director of Criminalistics at the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), presented information on the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database, which was established in 1994 by the federal government.
Sweich said the database is used in three ways. First, it can be used to show a link between cases, in which the same DNA is collected at both crime scenes. Second, it can be used to connect a crime to an offender, if they have the offender’s DNA on file. Third, it can be used to identify the remains of a deceased individual.
The CODIS system is overseen by OSBI at the state level and the FBI at the national level, she said. No private laboratories are allowed to use the database, which is severely limited even within law enforcement. Sweich noted that the OSBI director does not even have access to the database.
There has not been a single breach of the system, she said.
The collection of DNA upon arrest is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Jimmy Bunn, chief legal counsel for the OSBI. DNA profiles are expunged for arrestees whose charges are dismissed, who are charged for a crime that does not qualify for DNA collection or if charges are not brought about in a timely manner, he said.
Oklahoma law currently requires an individual to petition to expunge their record, he said. Expungement takes place at the state and national level, he said.
Cleveland County Sheriff Joe Lester was the chief investigator of the Juli Busken case, a prominent Oklahoma murder. It took 7 years to identify Juli’s murderer, even though he was arrested for a separate crime six months later. Lester said he fully supported DNA collection upon arrest.
Dean Lawrence Hellman, Oklahoma City University professor of law, said that limiting the scope of DNA collection upon arrest will save law enforcement resources.
