DNA nabbed 'Suffolk Strangler' Steve Wright, left, and Sally Anne Bowman's killer Mark Dixie, right
Posted on 02/24/2008 10:48:13 AM PST by BGHater
Senior police officers are increasing pressure for all British citizens to be put on a DNA database.
Their call for a national debate on whether everyone should be forced to give DNA samples to the authorities follows last week's convictions of two killers identified using "genetic fingerprints" - and comes as senior Scotland Yard officials have reportedly stated that new DNA evidence "will nail" the racist killers of teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Scotland Yard "is confident" that there will be a prosecution and a trial in that case, the Sunday Times has reported.
DNA nabbed 'Suffolk Strangler' Steve Wright, left, and Sally Anne Bowman's killer Mark Dixie, right
Senior officers were quoted as saying for the first time they are confident that new DNA and other forensic evidence, missed in the original investigation in 1993, will enable the five original suspects to be tried for Lawrence's murder.
Lawrence, 18, an A-level student, was stabbed to death at a bus stop in London, in 1993. His parents attempted but failed to bring a successful private prosecution against the five suspects. Last week a memorial erected in his name was vandalised in what London mayor Ken Livingston termed a "disgusting" racial attack.
Yesterday, the Government said that a universal DNA base was "impractical." But demands from police and judges are fuelling civil liberties groups' fears that Ministers will eventually impose compulsory screening.
The national DNA database, the biggest in the world, already files the genetic records of more than 4.5million people – including 560,000 never convicted of any offence.
This situation could change after a test-case at the European Court of Human Rights next week involving two Sheffield people.
Michael Marper and an unnamed youth – one of 100,000 children with no criminal convictions on the database – want their details removed from the register. They were arrested in 2001 but never charged.
Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993
The outcome will affect new plans to extend the powers of police to take genetic samples from anyone arrested or suspected of any crime – however minor.
But even if these powers are granted, this would still fall short of the universal mandatory database police say is necessary. Last night, the Home Office said such a database "would raise significant practical and ethical issues."
But yesterday, following the DNA-linked convictions of Ipswich serial killer Steve Wright and of Mark Dixie, the murderer of Sally Anne Bowman, the Association of Chief Police Officers called for a new debate on the issue.
Lincolnshire's Chief Constable Tony Lake, who speaks for ACPO on DNA, said: "If there was a national database of everybody, then we would solve more crimes, of that there is absolutely no doubt.
"But any database that we hold has to be reasonable and proportionate in the eyes of the public."
Wright was on the system after being convicted of theft in 2003. Dixie's DNA went on to the system after he was later involved in a bar brawl.
He was then arrested for Sally Anne's murder within five hours. Detective Superintendent Stuart Cundy, who headed the murder hunt, said: "A national DNA register – with all its appropriate safeguards – could have identified Sally Anne's murderer within 24 hours. Instead, it took nearly nine months before Mark Dixie was identified."
But Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said a national database was not a "silver bullet" and that it would raise practical as well as civil liberties issues.
"How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5million people on it is one thing," he said. "Doing that for 60million people is another."
Civil liberties groups warn such a register would be open to abuse. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Too many senior officers have been using high-profile cases like the murder of Sally Anne to showboat.
"Taking the DNA of every man, woman and child is as expensive and impractical as it is dangerous. It ignores the extremely intimate nature of DNA and the massive scope for error and abuse.
"We need a manageable database of those who have been convicted of sexual and violent crime."
Roger Smith, director of the law and human rights group Justice, added: "A broader police power to compel samples without the requirement of reasonable suspicion is a substantial and unwarranted intrusion on the rights of personal privacy. You either go forward to a universal database, which I think would be wrong, or you go back.
"I want a return to the 1995 position where samples could be kept on the convicted only."
The latest debate comes just months after one of Britain's most senior judges also called for a compulsory register.
In September, Lord Justice Sedley – an Appeal Court judge – called for the register to be made universal and condemned the existing system as "indefensible."
The rules regarding the retention of DNA have already been relaxed several times by the Government since the database was activated in 1995, when only DNA of convicted offenders could be held.
In 2004, new legislation permitted samples to be taken and retained from anyone arrested for a recordable offence.
Police are required to destroy samples taken from juveniles when they become adults if they have committed no further crimes and have the discretion to remove any samples from the register.
This is rarely exercised as police point to 'cold' cases increasingly being solved as DNA technology becomes more advanced.
Correct Title: Police turn up pressure for compulsory DNA database as Yard 'uses DNA to nail Stephen Lawrence killers'
Why not just lock everyone up in jail and only let them out to go to work? When they get too sick and can’t work just euthanize them. See how efficient the govt can be?
Personally? I see dozens of other, more immediate and useful battles to fight to maintain my freedoms, starting with the confirmation of my constitutional right to carry...
It begs the question....Who owns your DNA.
Tyranny never rests.
Ask Richard Jewel how it feels to be convicted in the media by the authorities and to have to prove your innocence.
With a DNA database, you are automatically a suspect. If you were ever “there”, you could’ve left some sort of evidence (which casts the net to everyone who attended the Atlanta Olympics up to that point or who’ve even been there in Atlanta).
And if someone wants to screw with the system they could drop a cigarette butt collected outside a business or maybe some hair clippings from a barber.
See how nice it can be to suddenly have to defend HOW your DNA/fingerprints etc were found on something at the scene?
Normally they’d have to build up a case around suspects and then start testing, this permits testing first and then building a case for how you could’ve been there. Ass backwards.
As it stands, the few who are wrongly suspected can voluntarily submit to a DNA test, lie detector test, gunshot residue test, etc. to clear their names.
The database is NOT there to help you prove your innocence.
There was a good page 1 article on this in the WSJ in the last couple of days.
Of course. I love using it to piss radical liberals off. I’ve learned that they are too stupid to respond to logic so I just like to have fun with them. My current fave: “If you support smoking bans then you are a Fascist. Whether you believe you are one or not is immaterial. You ARE a Fascist.”
I love watching them splutter.
What’s reported here is simply a few middle-ranking police officers flying kites. The response in Britain over the last two days from government, opposition, and even from more senior voices in the police has been uniformly hostile. I don’t see this happening any time soon.
If somebody more important and wealthier than you needs a new heart and you are a tissue match, who are you to deny them their right-to-life?
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