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Opinion: DNA Samples At Arrest Is Presumption Of Guilt, Not Innocence

By Alvin Gibson, The Raleigh Telegram

Saturday, July 10, 2010

RALEIGH - North Carolina leaders hope that our state will join the ranks of some others that collect DNA samples at the time of a felony arrest as opposed to waiting until after a trial, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and others have said that taking DNA swabs from suspects when they are arrested on felony charges -- instead of waiting until they are possibly found guilty after a trial of their peers -- will help solve cases.

However, that’s somewhat of a specious argument. One could also say that if they collected DNA from everyone in North Carolina whether they had been charged with a crime or not, we would be able to solve more cases.

We could also require everyone to be fingerprinted, give blood samples, get mugshots taken, and submit to strip searches at the request of any police officer. But we don’t.

Just because something is effective at solving crimes doesn’t mean we should do it or that it’s Constitutional, which should be at the forefront of every discussion when looking at all such proposals.

Our country was founded on the basis that citizens have a right to defend themselves against charges in a courtroom with a jury of their peers deciding the outcome.

As part of that process, one of the major tenets of our justice system is that all of those accused of a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

In North Carolina, we’ve all seen high profile cases where citizens were charged with a felony, only to have been pronounced innocent later before, during, or even years after the trial.

At a press conference that drew national attention years ago, Roy Cooper himself pronounced several Duke lacrosse players “innocent.”

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong tried them in the court of public opinion and found them guilty before they even got to have a trial.

Only after Nifong’s case fell apart did the truth come out and he was later disbarred.

More recently, Gregory Taylor in Raleigh was recently freed after the NC Innocence Commission reviewed his case.

During the hearings, it was revealed that an SBI lab technician lied about the status crime lab reports that helped put Taylor away in the first place. Furthermore, the lab technician did not disclose the true nature of the reports, which would have kept Taylor from being convicted in the first place.

Is this the agency we want in charge of keeping track of DNA evidence of people who are later found innocent?

There are certainly cases where DNA solved crimes and where it exonerated an incarcerated person.

As an example, Darryl Hunt was falsely accused of a rape and murder in Winston-Salem in 1984, only to be exonerated and set free in 2004 thanks to DNA evidence that pointed to another man.

However, that points to inconsistencies and problems in our justice system that lead to innocent people being convicted. We have to address those issues separately and just because we collect DNA from more people doesn’t mean that innocent people will not go to jail.

DNA contains your most personal of information and you can tell things from someone’s DNA that they may not even know about themselves.

As we continue down a slippery slope in collecting the most basic of information from our citizens to “combat crime” or “fight terrorism” or “for the war on drugs” or whatever the political push is that year, it’s evident that we’re trading personal privacy and freedom for safety and that can be a very dangerous thing.

In a few years, look for prosecutors and public officials representing the government to argue that we need to start collecting DNA during misdemeanor arrests as well. They will argue that it will help solve more cases.

In a few more years, look for prosecutors and public officials to argue that we need to start collecting DNA from everyone whether they are charged with a crime or not.

Perhaps they will require it to get a driver’s license or in order to get your high school diploma, you’ll have to give up a blood sample to get your DNA.

Government officials will argue that it will help solve more crimes.

People will complain about their rights being violated, but it will be too late.

The time to stop going down that road is now when collecting DNA would affect potentially innocent people who have been charged with a felony.

It’s in the interests of our society to make sure that our government officials keep in mind that we are all innocent until proven guilty.

Collecting DNA samples before a person even goes to trial presumes that people who have been charged are guilty until proven innocent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alvin Gibson is a guest opinion columnist for the Telegram and the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper or its management.

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