03/03/2010 04:55:00 PM EST
California Permits use of DNA Warrants to Identify Suspects
The California Supreme Court has authorized the use of DNA warrants when a suspect’s name is not yet known. The court ruled 5-2 that a suspect’s DNA profile can serve as the unique identifier in place of an unknown suspect’s name. In order to insure that a case is filed before the statue of limitations runs, prosecutors are increasingly using DNA warrants. The court determined that a suspect’s DNA profile satisfies the specificity requirement for identification set out in a California law that contains the same language as the fourth amendment to the US Constitution.
The victim in this case, Deborah L., was raped by an unknown suspect in 1994. She was taken to the hospital where DNA samples were collected following the crime. Four days before the statute of limitations was to expire, the Sacramento District Attorney filed charges of rape and sexual assault against an unknown “John Doe,” using his unique 13-loci deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) profile to identify the suspect. Several months later, a criminalist searching the California offender database using the DNA profile developed in the Deborah L. case generated a match between the DNA profile in the John Doe arrest warrant and the suspect’s profile in the state’s DNA database. Based on the match, an amended arrest warrant was issued. The suspect, Paul Robinson, was arrested and convicted on five counts of rape and sexual assault. Robinson’s attorneys appealed the conviction claiming the DNA identification used in the original complaint was not a sufficient identifier. The California Supreme Court disagreed in this decision.
“For purposes of the Fourth Amendment, we conclude that the arrest warrant in question, which described the defendant by his 13-loci DNA profile and included an explanation that the profile had a random match probability such that there was essentially no chance of its being duplicated in the human population except in the case of genetically identical sibling, complied with the mandate of our federal Constitution that the person seized be described with particularity. For the reasons stated above, we likewise conclude the arrest warrant in question described the defendant with sufficient particularity to avoid a violation of the warrant particularity requirement of our state Constitution.” (Cal. Const., art. I, § 13.)
The court ruled that the statute of limitations is satisfied in cases where the warrant identifies the perpetrator by his or her unique DNA profile only, “ if the prosecution is commenced by the filing of the “John Doe” arrest warrant within the limitations period. In reaching this conclusion, we find that an unknown suspect’s unique DNA profile satisfies the ‘particularity’ requirement for an arrest warrant.”
The court upheld the conviction and 65 year sentence of Paul Robinson on rape and sexual assault charges following the attack of victim Deborah L. in her home. She was taken to the hospital where DNA samples were collected following the crime. Prosecutors filed the warrant using Robinson’s DNA as the identifier just before the statute of limitations expired in 1990. Robinson’s DNA was mistakenly collected and entered into California’s database where the match was discovered. The court also tackled the issue of the improperly collected DNA sample, but determined that the mistakes made when collecting Robinson’s DNA were not sufficient to trigger the exclusionary rule.