Multnomah County indicts unidentified DNA

[sbr]

Not a brand new story but I just saw it today and hadn't heard about it before, seems pretty interesting and I am curious about the opinions of the law-talkers (and anyone else) here.

http://thevig.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=125676727885157000

When suspects can't be indicted, their DNA can

You can't charge somebody with a crime if you don't know who he or she is. Or maybe you can.

The Multnomah County district attorney's office was reminded last week of one of its more unusual indictments. A New York Times story detailed how prosecutors there have obtained convictions on 13 suspects who were originally identified and indicted as their own DNA.

Two years ago, the Multnomah County DA served a warrant and successfully obtained a grand jury indictment on a man with no name and no identifiable physical characteristics — in fact, no known characteristics at all except one: his DNA.

The indictment resulted from two 1995 sexual assaults, one in Portland and one in Gresham, one in May and the other in November. At the time, police did not connect the crimes, and in neither case was a suspect apprehended. But sexual assault exams of the two victims yielded two DNA samples that presumably belonged to the rapists.

It turned out that the DNA samples matched, and that means if a suspect ever is apprehended for the crimes, the DNA samples could be used to convict him for both.

But until recently, the statute of limitations on most sexual assault cases stood at 12 years. Once that time period elapsed, nobody could be prosecuted for the crimes. And that appeared to be what would happen, as both rapes remained unsolved and mostly unnoticed for 11 years.

That's when Robert Sanders, a Gresham police detective, approached Don Rees, senior deputy district attorney and supervisor of the DA's sex crimes unit, about extending the statute of limitations.

Sanders and Rees knew that the only way to extend the statute would be to go before a grand jury and indict somebody for the crime. And to get an indictment, they would have to provide the grand jury with specific, credible information about the suspect. A standard warrant might describe a suspect's height, weight and hair, or his way of speaking. Rees had none of those.

And the rules are clear, Rees says. "You have to be describing an identifiable person."

So Rees filed a John Doe warrant (usually reserved for suspects with no known name) with the only identifying information he had — the DNA. And he went before the grand jury with the victims, detectives and crime lab scientists, laying out his case and getting the indictment.

The indictment was the first of its kind in Oregon.

"There's the potential for legal challenges, but the alternative was to sit by and do nothing," he says.

A well-crafted story would have the police eventually arresting somebody for some other crime, taking his DNA and having a computer make the match with the old rape cases. But that hasn't happened. Yet.

What has happened, however, is a burgeoning field of forensics DNA. In recent years, states have passed legislation permitting justice authorities to bank the DNA of people they convict of crimes, and sometimes of people they merely arrest.

Not everybody thinks John Doe indictments should be allowed. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Washington, D.C., passed a resolution five years ago condemning the practice.

Extending the statute of limitations and then apprehending suspects tilts the playing field too far in favor of prosecution, says Jack King, director of public affairs for the association.

King says witnesses that might have helped the defense case can disappear, or their memories can become fuzzy. The passage of so much time can make mounting a credible defense too difficult, King says — especially when the prosecution has a DNA match on its side.

"That's the reason we have statutes of limitations," King says.

The defense lawyers association also has come out against the growing acceptance of taking DNA samples from people convicted of crimes. King says in some states, DNA samples are routinely taken and stored from people convicted of misdemeanors as well as felonies, and that in a few states even people arrested but not convicted of crimes have their DNA kept on file.

"That's an affront to personal privacy, and it doesn't make a lot of sense," King says of across-the-board DNA sampling. The defense lawyers association's stand is that DNA banking should not be allowed for people arrested but not convicted of crimes, and that people convicted of misdemeanors as well as juvenile offenders should not have their DNA taken and stored.

In Oregon, DNA samples are banked from all people convicted of felonies. Between 700 and 1,000 samples are sent to the state crime lab each month by department of corrections officials. Since 1991, when the state began collecting DNA samples, about 115,000 have accumulated.

And those samples are yielding results, says Susan Hormann, DNA unit supervisor for the state police. According to Hormann, about 20 times a month a match is made between a current case and a stored DNA profile. Many of those hits lead to crimes being solved, Hormann says.

"I think it makes the people of Oregon safer," Hormann says. "It allows us to provide investigative information to police, so they're able to do their job tracking down people who may be suspects, or even excluding someone who didn't leave (DNA) evidence."

As for the 1995 rapes, Sanders has continued working the case and says it is likely the rapist is dead. Unless the rapist left the country, Sanders says, the only other possibilities are that he has never been convicted of a felony since the rapes and has never left his DNA at any other crime scene. If he had, a DNA match with the old samples would have been made and word sent to Sanders.

"I have two fairly nasty sexual assaults occurring in 1995, and nothing since. So where is this guy?" Sanders says.

[Jaron]

Will the DNA be tried as an adult?