futuratronics

14.5.07

> Nueva York armará una base de datos de ADN de los criminales en su estado.

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Andrés Hax dijo...: May 14, 2007
New York Plan for DNA Data in Most Crimes
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a major expansion of New York’s database of DNA samples to include people convicted of most crimes, while making it easier for prisoners to use DNA to try to establish their innocence.

Currently, New York State collects DNA from those convicted of about half of all crimes, typically the most serious.

The governor’s proposal would order DNA taken from those found guilty of any misdemeanor, including minor drug offenses, harassment or unauthorized use of a credit card, according to a draft of his bill. It would not cover offenses considered violations, like disorderly conduct.

In expanding its database to include all felonies and misdemeanors, New York would be nearly alone, although a handful of states collect DNA from some defendants upon arrest, even before conviction.

Mr. Spitzer is also seeking mandatory sampling of all prisoners in the state, as well as all of those on parole, on probation or registered as sex offenders.

That expansion alone would add about 50,000 samples to the database, at a cost of about $1.75 million, his office said. It did not provide an estimate of the cost of taking DNA samples in all future convictions.

“This legislation will help us bring the guilty to justice and exonerate those who have been wrongly accused,” Mr. Spitzer said in a statement. He plans to introduce his bill this week.

The bill would make it easier for prisoners and defendants to obtain court orders to have their DNA tested against evidence collected in their cases and to have that evidence tested against the entire database of DNA, aides to the governor said.

It also would allow prisoners who have pleaded guilty to seek DNA testing that might prove them innocent, the aides said; some judges now decline such requests.

Police officials and prosecutors nationwide have trumpeted DNA collection as one of the most effective tools in law enforcement. New York’s database, for example, now contains almost 250,000 samples and has produced matches in almost 4,000 cases, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

At the same time, DNA has become a useful tool for defense lawyers whose clients proclaim their innocence long after their convictions.

According to the Innocence Project, a legal clinic affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University in Manhattan, DNA testing has led to the exoneration of 23 people in New York who had been convicted of crimes, and more than 200 nationwide.

By addressing concerns about access for the wrongly convicted, Mr. Spitzer may have a better chance of gaining support among state lawmakers for an expansion of DNA collection, said Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat who is chairman of the Codes Committee, which deals with criminal justice.

“I’ve always been in favor of the expansion of the database to all crimes, but I want these protections to be put in place so that there’s a balance between protecting the innocent as well as prosecuting the guilty,” Mr. Lentol said. “I think the governor is on the right track doing it this way.”

Mr. Lentol acknowledged that his support for DNA testing in all convictions was not in line with his colleagues in the Democratic majority in the Assembly, who have repeatedly blocked bills passed by the Republican-controlled State Senate that would have expanded DNA collection. The Senate passed such a bill again this month.

Charles Carrier, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said he could not yet comment on Mr. Spitzer’s proposal.

He said that in the past, Assembly Democrats have been reluctant to approve wider DNA testing because of concerns about “the way evidence was cataloged and stored, handled and controlled and processed.”

Some civil liberties groups oppose broader collection of DNA samples, out of concerns about how they might be used beyond the justice system.

“Because DNA, unlike fingerprints, provides an enormous amount of personal information, burgeoning government DNA databases pose a serious threat to privacy,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “They must include strict protections to assure that DNA is collected and used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes, such as exonerating the innocent or convicting the guilty.”

John McArdle, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, said that Mr. Bruno had not seen the governor’s bill and would not comment on it until he had.

But Mr. McArdle said that Mr. Bruno supported the expansion of DNA collection to the perpetrators of all crimes, as well as another proposal Mr. Spitzer has included in his bill: giving prosecutors up to five more years to bring charges in cases where DNA evidence has been collected but not yet matched to a particular person.

New York has had a DNA database since 2000. Originally, it included samples from people convicted of sex offenses and only certain felonies.

But it has been expanded twice in the last three years to include all felonies and some misdemeanors, aides to the governor said.

Still, only about 46 percent of people convicted of crimes in the state are required to submit to the collection of a DNA sample, which now is usually done by swabbing the inside of the mouth.

Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat in his first year as governor, is not the first political leader in the state to call for such an expansion. His predecessor, George E. Pataki, a Republican, pushed for an “all crimes” bill.

Last year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican, also campaigned for the testing of everyone who is convicted, saying that murderers and rapists also commit petty crimes and that mandatory DNA collection could lead to their convictions for the more serious offenses.

But Mr. Spitzer is wrapping his proposal for expanding the database together with ideas that are more likely to appeal to those who believe many defendants are wrongly convicted.

He is seeking to require that prosecutors notify the court if they learn that there may be DNA evidence that could exonerate a prisoner. Currently, state law does not obligate prosecutors to volunteer that information, a lawyer in the governor’s office said.

Mr. Spitzer’s proposal also calls for the creation of a state office that would be responsible for studying all cases that resulted in exonerations and looking for flaws in the system that led to those wrongful convictions. That office would not be an independent body, often referred to as an “innocence commission,” but a part of the Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, is sponsoring a bill to create an “innocence commission,” which is part of a package of legislation relating to DNA testing that was introduced this month. The package includes a bill proposed by Mr. Lentol that would expand prisoners’ access to the DNA database.

Barry Scheck, the co-director of the Innocence Project, said that many of the people his organization had helped to exonerate would have been freed much sooner, or would not have been convicted at all, if the changes sought by Mr. Lentol and his colleagues had been in place.

Mr. Scheck and his co-director, Peter Neufeld, were not prepared to comment on Mr. Spitzer’s bill.

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Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company; mayo 14, 2007