Sheriff wants 30,000 more on DNA databank

By Scott Shenk

Published: August 30, 2008

As one veteran lawman sees it, the DNA databank has been the most significant crime-fighting innovation in his 30-odd years wearing a badge.

Virginia’s DNA databank has been a leading model nationwide; in 1989, the state became the first to create such a databank, and recently marked its 5,000th “cold hit.”

Albemarle Sheriff J.E. “Chip” Harding helped improve the state’s databank last year when legislation he pushed for helped ensure that thousands of felons who had slipped through the cracks would be entered into the system. That legislation helped put another 11,000 felons in the databank, and now there are about 280,000 profiles in the databank, which can be run against unsolved cases and new ones that pop up.

Harding said he thinks the databank can be even better, and he is gearing up to push an effort that could add thousands more DNA profiles to the system. His enthusiasm to expand the databank is not shared by privacy rights advocates.

The sheriff hasn’t hammered out all the details, but he continues work on a position paper focusing on two issues:

l He wants to include felons from before 1990 in the DNA databank, which he estimated could add as many as 30,000 profiles. Current law includes only felons arrested or incarcerated after 1989; and

l He wants anyone arrested for a misdemeanor (except certain cases such as minor traffic offenses) to provide DNA for the databank, as they already do with fingerprints.

“My mission is, I’m trying to get that discussion on the table,” Harding said.

The sheriff said he isn’t yet prepared to argue his case for the changes, but he knows he’ll face opposition, especially against his wish to include all arrestees in the databank.

The American Civil Liberties Union indeed takes issue with Harding’s plans, as it does with the DNA databank as a whole.

Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia ACLU, said, “For us, it’s a privacy issue” and collecting data from anyone “is indeed invading individuals’ privacy.”

He called Harding’s idea of expanding the databank a “dangerous, slippery slope.”

“There is a natural tension between being a government official and protecting individuals,” Willis said, adding that there needs to be watchdogs, such as the ACLU, protecting individuals’ freedom.

Harding said his goal is not only to catch criminals but also to keep the innocent from being wrongly convicted, and he believes the DNA databank has proven useful on both measures. As an example, he pointed to a 2005 case in which a University of Virginia law student was raped. She identified a suspect, but DNA evidence eventually pointed to a different man, John Henry Agee, who, because of his criminal history, was in the databank. He was convicted and sentenced to a 40-year prison term.

Expanding the database will only enhance the ability to catch the guilty and “protect the innocent,” Harding said.

Willis said that such an expansion naturally would lead to a snowball effect.

“With the expansion of the databank, there could be 10,000 more cases solved,” he said. “If you collect DNA from everyone … there could be 20,000” more cases solved. “But that comes at a cost to our privacy … and that comes at a cost to our freedom.”

Willis said he believes the government should never perform blanket collections of individual data — aside from Social Security numbers — and instead should retrieve personal data “only when it is necessary.”

Harding considers the databank too important to treat that way, saying it has “had the biggest impact, particularly on violent crimes, of any one thing in the 30 years I’ve been in law enforcement.”

And he said the problem of “Big Brother” collecting DNA from all arrestees could be moot if it is treated like fingerprints, which are no more than ink impressions of a person’s fingertips. Harding said the databank would not hold actual physical DNA from arrestees but rather it would be “biometric fingerprints” or “junk DNA.” He said he needs to confirm that with forensic scientists.

While Harding knows he’ll face critics over his proposal, he also said there has been general support for the idea. He has talked about it with several legislative leaders and others who will be running for state offices. He said they liked the idea, but wanted more details.

Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, was non-committal, saying he would have to know more specifics.

“Chip’s been a leader in fixing our DNA database,” Bell said. “I look forward to seeing what Chip comes up with.”

Harding also talked to voters last year while he stumped during his campaign for sheriff.

Most voters he talked to felt it was “a no-brainer,” he said.

Harding said he has a lot on his plate with his sheriff duties but that he plans to have a position paper ready in about two months. And the sheriff thinks he has a good argument to make.

“The bigger we can build that databank,” Harding said, “the more hits we’re gonna have … the less criminals we’ll have.”