BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a report today on a conflict between solving crimes and protecting privacy. It’s called “familial searching.” Police can now take DNA from a crime scene and compare it to millions of DNA samples in a government database. If there is even a partial match, that could lead to the criminal by way of his or her family members if their DNA is in the database. And they could be completely innocent. Should that practice be legal? Lucky Severson reports.
Unidentified Man (working in lab): Stick it right back in there. Okay, and we’ll close it up right there. And this is the same thing, these are …
LUCKY SEVERSON: Three years ago, Pearl Wilson’s son Charles died in a Maryland prison while awaiting sentencing for rape. But for his mother, her son lives on.
PEARL WILSON: My son lives in me and I in him, and his blood is my blood, and my blood was in him.
SEVERSON: Though Charles is dead his DNA still sits in a databank. By law DNA has to be gathered from all felons. Some states even take it from arrestees. The DNA profiles remain there indefinitely.
Ms. WILSON: I’m worried about them continuously holding my son’s DNA in that database.
Welcome to the club. Years ago, when I was still in the military, we were required to give a DNA sample to the Government. At the time, we were told that it was so they could identify our bodies in the event of catastrophic injury…so that our next of kin could get closure, receive benefits they would have been entitled to, and receive the insurance money they would have been owed. We were told that they would only keep our DNA samples until we turned age 60. They never said anything one way or the other about the [b][i]data[/b][/i] that was gathered. They only said what would happen to the actual sample.
Now, I wonder…