...So, Get Off Your Ass and DO SOMETHING

For a moment I find it necessary to go against everything I have ever mentioned about absorbing our factual information and learning from the media. It seems America’s Most Wanted host, John Walsh is on to something. After years of hosting this popular television show it finally became personal for Walsh. A close family friend, 21 year old Lindsey Harris went missing in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2005. Three weeks after reported missing her remains were found, however her friends and family at Lindsey’s home in Illinois were left to wonder about her until 2008. Three years they spent not knowing where their daughter, sisters, friend was. There was no way to make the connection between the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in the remains found in Illinois and the missing person’s case in Nevada. Unfortunately the Harris’s are not alone. Thousands upon thousands of cases like this one arise every year in the United States.  The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that around forty thousand cases arise every year where remains cannot be connected to a missing person.

            “Imagine it! Forty thousand families, aching for answers. Even if DNA samples from those cases has been submitted to the national DNA data bank, known as CODIS [Combined DNA Index System], those families don’t have much reason for hope. The Justice Department says that the FBI, which oversees CODIS, has a backlog of some 200,000 DNA samples waiting to be entered. And that backlog is growing every day. This country can put a robot on Mars, yet loved ones of missing persons have to wait years to get answers, or get remains back. It’s just wrong.” (Walsh)

An up to date DNA database would help solve this problem. Along with missing persons cases, any serious crimes could be handled in a more efficient and timely manner. Not to mention falsely accused criminals and the wrongly convicted would finally have a walk free. Finally we would be able to utilize a way to prove criminal’s innocence.

 

While many make the claim, much like the wire-tapping whine that this is an abuse of privacy it is necessary to realize that not everyone would have their DNA in the database. This would remain a privilege to whoever gets arrested.  Of course, when it comes the day that each baby born is required to give DNA before leaving the hospital you may want to keep your complaints to yourself. The availability of police to take DNA should lie with other personal precautions. Insurance companies routinely require extensive medical history from clients, mortgage lenders subject applicants to giving a full credit report, and employers have urine tests for drug and alcohol consumption. If you are willing to give out all this personal information to these strangers, then why not to the safe hands of the police?

 

FBI, CIA, and local police officers would all have access to this information to help protect you and to no cost to yourself or to our country. In case you haven’t had the opportunity of hearing, we are in the middle of a rather large economic crisis. However, this database would cost little to nothing compared to other issues political pundits want the American public to fund. The laboratory technology and computers are already available under the name CODIS, it is just not being utilized. It is very unlikely for it to cost substantial amounts to begin to use this resource, but the “issue is properly the price that we should put on justice. The electoral rhetoric of ‘Law and Order’ suggests that the public puts a very high premium on protection of crime.” (Weekes)

 

            Thirty percent of crimes contain blood, semen, or saliva of suspects at the scene. All three are things that can be immediately matched with a person using DNA. However, a database is not being put in place to try and replace conventional crime solving. It would be used to identify the suspects then investigations would be conducted from that point by more conventional means. “There is no possibility of escaping the provision of technical evidence before a court. Doctors, ballistics experts, forensic scientists are already a common feature of the large criminal trial. The jury system is actually a bastion against conviction on account of complicated scientific facts.” (Weekes) Unfortunately, currently we lack the organization to do this. The FBI (overseer of CODIS) reports that they have an estimated two hundred thousand DNA samples backlogged and waiting to be entered. Apparently the government has larger priorities on their “to do lists.”

 

            Perhaps they do not realize the impact this would have on the criminal world. Maybe they do not realize the endless possibilities of having numerous people’s DNA available to match on instant to criminal evidence.

            “He was a church-going father of two, and for more than 30 years Dennis Rader eluded police in the Wichita area, killing 10 people and signing taunting letters with a self-styled monogram: BTK, for Bind Torture Kill. In the end, it was a DNA sample that tied BTK to his crimes. Not his own DNA. But his daughter's…looking for close-to-perfect matches with DNA from crime scenes. A partial match with a convicted criminal could implicate a brother or daughter or father of the convict. Such searches, advocates say, constitute a powerful law enforcement tool that, experts say, could increase by 40 percent the number of suspects identified through DNA.” (Nakashima)

 

This specific case was fortunate as Rader was already a suspect and by pure luck- investigators having access to sources such as his daughter’s DNA. However as a number of states stand, lab analysts who determine potential suspects in this way are required to keep their mouths shut. They are simply not permitted to give this information to investigators. Having a database where all DNA was available for all investigators to use would help solve this insanity in addition to allowing more cases to be solved similarly to the way the Rader case was.