Just Say NO to DNA Requests

Got DNA? That's the question of the day out in Truro, where state police have been loitering outside Highland Creamery, the Filling Station and Dutra's Market, trying to score DNA samples from the local lads. The requests were made in an attempt to solve the Christa Worthington murder case, which has stymied investigators for three years.  While the American Civil Liberties Union has taken exception to the investigative methods, it hasn't stopped police from imposing themselves upon the populace. The needle in the haystack strategy - removing every straw until you find the one that's covering the needle - might work if all the straws were in one stack. But the truth is that whoever murdered Worthington might not have been living in Truro or doesn't live there now. And since it would seem unlikely that if the murderer were in town, he (we do know that it's a he, don't we?) would voluntarily give incriminating evidence to investigators. In July, Nancy Murray, director of the ACLU's Bill of Rights education project warned of the erosion of our civil rights in the name of national defense. The Patriot Act, she said, gives the government "extraordinary broad powers to seize your private records, monitor your telephone and Internet use, and secretly search your home without telling you." Like the Patriot Act, the DNA detail on the lower Cape is, we are told, there for our protection. There are murderers among us and the only way to be sure that we can expose them is to give law enforcement the tools needed to catch them, whether it be monitoring your personal correspondence or running a cotton swab inside your mouth. [more]

• The investigative value of mass DNA testing is debatable. According to a study conducted by the University of Nebraska, mass DNA testing is "extremely unproductive." The study, which looked at 18 cases where mass testing was done, determined that in only one case did it result in the crime being solved. In that case, only 25 samples were collected. It's been suggested that the real purpose behind the DNA harvest is to find out who doesn't want to provide the state with a sample.