Court shuts down kin DNA searches
Though familial genetic hunts have led to ‘laudable’ solving of crimes, judge sez Legislature must give OK
DNA searches that identify criminal suspects via genetic links to their relatives were banned Thursday by a New York Appellate Division ruling that said the use of the searches must be approved by the Legislature.
In the 3-2 decision by an appellate panel, Judge Judith Gische said state regulations allowing the use of familial searches to solve crimes “implicates important liberty interests of the family members who may be targeted” in police investigations.
The judge also noted that the state’s DNA database is “overwhelmingly populated with the DNA of people of color. Thus, the likelihood of being targeted because someone is a person of color [likely a male] is increased.”
That means the use of familial DNA searches must be approved by the Legislature, Gische wrote.
Gische noted in her ruling that the searches have helped law enforcement. “[U]se of familial DNA matching has produced laudable crime solving outcomes in many cases,” she wrote.
One of the most famous criminals captured by the process was the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, who is believed to have killed at least 13 people and raped dozens of women and was snared by the technique in 2018.
Investigators caught DeAngelo by entering DNA from the killer’s crime scenes into DNA databases. The database searches identified some of DeAngelo’s relatives, which led investigators to DeAngelo himself. He pleaded guilty to multiple charges, and is now serving multiple life sentences in a California prison.
But opponents of the technique say such high-profile successes are outweighed by the possibility the searches will harm innocent people. They also question the searches’ reliability, and say the state’s rules had few limits on their use by police and gave little recourse to people wrongly ensnared in investigations.
Gische’s ruling overturns rules adopted in 2017 by New York’s Commission on Forensic Science to allow familial database searches.
The state could take the case to the Court of Appeals. Officials are reviewing the Appellate Division ruling, said Kirstan Conley, a spokeswoman with the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, which oversees the Commission on Forensic Science.
Gische’s opinion came in a case filed in 2018 in Manhattan Supreme Court by Terrence Stevens and Benjamin Joseph, both professionals without criminal records whose brothers had prior arrests.
Their lawyers, the Legal Aid Society and the firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, called the New York regulation allowing the searches “an abuse of discretion, arbitrary and capricious” and an attempt to conduct an “end-run” around the Legislature.
In a dissent, judges Anil Singh and Jeffrey Oing wrote they did not believe Stevens and Joseph had standing to sue because they had never been arrested.
The state Legislature has considered bills allowing familial DNA searches, but none of have passed.
It’s not clear to what extent the technique has been used in New York, or how many convictions have resulted.
In November, authorities credited familial searching in the arrest of Joseph Martinez for the 1999 murder of 13-yearold Minerliz Soriano in the Bronx.
The state’s DNA database was created in 1994 and was initially to store genetic material of the most serious offenders, but it has been expanded repeatedly and since 2012 has included everyone convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor in the state.
The court decision affects only the state’s DNA database. The city medical examiner’s office operates a separate local DNA database, which does not conduct familial searches, a spokeswoman for that agency said.
In March, Legal Aid filed a separate lawsuit against the city over the local database, alleging it is illegal and unregulated and should be shut down.