Posted on 01/30/2015 3:00:36 PM PST by Theoria
Virginia mother Gil Harrington is pushing Virginia to expand its database of DNA to include people convicted of Class 1 misdemeanors — a move she hopes will save lives.
Harrington’s daughter, Morgan Dana Harrington, was a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student when she was abducted and murdered in 2009, allegedly by the same man now accused of killing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham last October.
The alleged abductor, Jesse Matthew, was convicted of criminal trespassing in 2010, which means his DNA may have led prosecutors to solve Morgan’s case, which in turn means that he may have been jailed before his alleged encounter with Graham. He is currently incarcerated in Charlottesville, Virginia where he awaits trial in March.
Harrington, who founded the group Help Save the Next Girl, addressed Virginia’s General Assembly this week. Today, she talks with Here & Now’s Lisa Mullins about her efforts to pass a new law on DNA.
(Excerpt) Read more at hereandnow.wbur.org ...
I agree wholeheartedly with this expansion.
Yes because the dna databases that already have millions in them already have been such a deterrent.
So many liberal freedom takers love using women and patsies like her to do their bidding “for the sake of the children” while letting the very same criminals go due to overcrowding, technicalities, and plea-bargaining charges or even dropping them. They beg for laws making it worse on felons with guns and somehow this multiplier always gets plea-bargained off. So much for the law working.
I say no. They want to take dna just from people they question, for people not even charged with crimes. No. Big brother can kiss my white a$$.
You want to make a difference? Fight for rights that your daughters and sons could be armed on campus so they can fight back. Violent criminals don’t care about the laws. These are “AFTER THE FACT” laws. Ater they’ve murdered someone.
Be a little freakign proactive mom and fight for a law that gives people the ability to fight back. These are almost always surprise attacks, so the victim(s) will have disparity of force on their side.
Put the DNA of kids of criminals in the database and get a Headstart that will actually work.
Once DNA has been tested by ancestry.com, 23and Me, familyTreeDNA, and similar companies, at no cost you can upload your results into GEDMatch.com. One of the features at that site is to predict your eye color based on these second-hand DNA results.
If eye color can be predicted, why not hair and skin color? And perhaps an estimate of height?
And if physical features can be predicted from a small DNA sample, shouldn’t law enforcement use such tests to produce a pretty fair description of wrongdoers?
I forgot, all this testing is free.
And the data can never be abused by law enforcement.
And how are they to know they aren’t grabbing an innocent person’s dna that lived in the place last year, or was at a party there a couple weeks ago?
You just think someone spouts an answer out and without thinking about the downsides and the privacy expansion concerns your impulse is to react with feelings rather than a pros and cons examination, a bigger picture view of it, and make a better decision.
Why?
Yes. Let’s have everyone’s DNA on record. What could go wrong? /s
I completely agree with you.
“Why?”
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To help identify and/or to create leads to perps who commit crimes and leave DNA residue behind. It can also be used to identify “unknown” deadbeat dads with kids on welfare (being paid using MY taxes).
You haven’t left any of your DNA at any crime scenes by any chance, have you?
What Is a Misdemeanor?
In criminal law, a misdemeanor is a lesser type of crime that is usually punished by a monetary fine and/or a short jail sentence of less than one year. A person who is convicted of a misdemeanor is formally called a “misdemeanant”.
Common examples of misdemeanors include petty theft offenses, public intoxication, trespassing, and simple assault.
Source: Legal Match
i do sympathize with the mom. i would rather she fight for her daughter and everyone else’s’right to defend themselves rather than give up more freedom of everyone over to law enforcement under the false guise of “peace and security”.
this kind of stuff just makes “fishing expeditions” by government that much more possible, and that means more abuse’of the system and more innocent people at risk for false’positives or becoming suspects just because dna is present and because they lived someplace months or years ago, or were at a friends place, they’re now a suspect.
Since when a misdeamenor enrolled us in a military like databse?
“I say no. They want to take dna just from people they question, for people not even charged with crimes. No. Big brother can kiss my white a$$.”
If you read the article, you would see that the proposed law would only take DNA from criminals upon CONVICTION. Big difference.
Insinuating that I oppose this because I might have left DNA at a crime scene is moronic. Your reasons for supporting this are naive and you demonstrate very little understanding of the criminal justice system and our government. Do you really think this would be used to identify dead beat dads and that those dead beat dads would some how magically take accountability? Seriously??
Create leads to identify perps of crime? Yeah, because there’s absolutley no way this would be abused?? Misdemeanors is a very wide net that many people now and many more in the future would be caught in to boost the value of the database.
Why stop at misdemeanors? Next will be traffic violations and then we should all just have DNA extracted at birth for the DNA database. It’s for the children and our personal safety!
in this instance. but other recent instances have been for taking dna from arrested people, or detained people. or even just ticketed people.
it’s still inching downwards is my point.
I completely agree. For many years I worked with multiple Law Endorcement Agencies and Prosecutors. Most were good but some would cut corners and bend rules to serve a desired purpose.
We also have no idea what type of technology will develop that utilizes a persons DNA and how it could be applied for good or be abused to obtain more power and control over people.
it just strikes me so many folks never think about the ability of govt to set someone up. they think it doesn’t happen here. they think only in godless commie countries do people / the state ever set up others, not in our good country where our govt and leo’s are spotless and have no weaknesses or sin in them.
criminals don’t gve a sh1t if they break laws or leave evidence. their defense lawyers will do what they do, regardless. if laws like this deterred criminals we’d have no crime. we have thousands and thousands of laws to deal with crime after the fact.
i want citizens to have better rights protecting themselves from criminals rather than giving more coercive surveillance power over to the state.
I remember an America where even taking fingerprints by the police was frowned upon.
I remember reading where the police took everyone’s fingerprints in a small town to catch a murderer, then afterward were forced to publicly burn the rest of the fingerprints.
Anonymity has long been an American tradition. Back in the 1840s, in the western territories, you NEVER asked a person, “What was your name in the states?”
Alas, we no longer live under those freedoms.
I don’t know that you can just plan on shooting someone who means you harm. Sure, you might be able to shoot them, but there are many circumstances where that won’t work.
The approach taken by the NYPD where they started arresting people for minor crimes, like turnstile jumping in the subway, proves that people who will break big laws will also break little laws.
Infamously, the “Son of Sam” case was broken because he illegally parked his car.
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