Watching the Watchers Thursday March 11, 2010
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Obama OK with DNA Sampling Upon Arrest?
by wok3
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 06:50 AM EST
When someone is arrested, the theory is that they are innocent until proven guilty. Some say that giving a DNA sample is no different from having your fingerprints taken, also a common occurence after an arrest. Another factor is that innocent people have already been released due to this DNA sample being retrieved upon an arrest, as the legal system finds out that it has the wrong person locked away.
The potential for misuse seems staggering though, with a national database storing this information. It is not as if law enforcement has not fiddled with evidence before now, and with this additional tool at their disposal, it seems an almost impossible task to defend someone who has been identified by this DNA sample comparison as a culprit. It is not that I do not wish guilty people to get away with crimes, but how can we be assured this system would not fail, perhaps even by a simple mistake in data entry. Would it even be possible to undue such a thing?
The other side of the argument is crystal clear, if we take a DNA sample of everyone that is arrested, then more guilty parties will be caught. But how can we ever be certain that a DNA match was not the result of a mistake, or perhaps even 2 or more mistakes piled on top of each other?
If someone had been convicted of a felony, then I would have no problem whatsoever in obtaining a DNA sample from that person, but to require this from everyone seems to be casting a very wide net – with little if any guarantee that there would not be some sort of mishap that resulted in the incarceration of an innocent person. Obviously even someone convicted of a felony could be found out to be innocent at a future date, but at least the potential for this mistake would be reduced considerably.
Another factor is that as DNA has become a normal part of investigations, career criminals have taken steps to reduce the chance of their DNA being found. So what is someone innocent of a particular crime has had their DNA entered into the system at an earlier time, yet because of the precautions of the guilty party, only the innocent personÂ’s DNA is retrieved from a crime scene? Good luck if you have to rely on an attorney provided by the court in that case. I guess that problem exists with fingerprints as well, but since DNA is the newcomer, it seems more difficult to challenge the seemingly sure-fire authenticity it offers to jurors.