Suspicion by genetic association

[Liberal_in_LA]

Suspicion by genetic association


The advent of DNA evidence in the late 1980s promised to help identify dangerous felons and to free innocent prisoners whose genetic "fingerprints" did not match those found at crime scenes. States started collecting biological samples from arrestees and the federal government created the Combined DNA Index System, which at present contains more than 5 million genetic profiles. Unfortunately, several states, including California, use their samples to conduct searches for partial DNA matches, which can reveal that specific genetic material probably belongs to a close relative of an individual profiled. As a result, the same technology that once held forth hope to the innocent now threatens their most basic liberties.


The science behind familial DNA matching is straightforward. Much as exact DNA matches have been employed to convict rapists and murders, partial DNA matches enable criminologists to home in on relatives of a sample provider with roughly 90 percent confidence that one of these relatives was at the crime scene. Because crime labs perform their analysis on Y chromosomes, only males can be identified through this process.


Last year, in the earliest reported success of such screening, Denver police used the technique to charge Luis Jaimes-Tinajero with a car burglary. First, they attempted to connect blood left at the site of the break-in with samples in the county's database. When they uncovered no precise match, they then looked for partial matches - and found one in Jaimes-Tinajero's brother. A subsequent investigation of the brother's close male relatives led them to the offender - whose DNA proved to be an exact match.

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Criminals may have no reasonable expectation of genetic privacy, but the innocent relatives of individuals in the database do have a right to be free from excessive investigation. During the process of hunting down guilty kin, authorities will inevitably question fathers and brothers and nephews whose only crime is being related to the offender. Moreover, because those with DNA samples in the database are disproportionately African American and Latino, these communities will bear the brunt of such investigations.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/26/EDVQ1CF7HR.DTL#ixzz0jReQdJ0c

[Webster Green]

1. This doesn't sound right to me..

"partial DNA matches enable criminologists to home in on relatives of a sample provider
with roughly 90 percent confidence that one of these relatives was at the crime scene".

How could they possibly arrive at the 90% figure? That makes no sense at all.

[hughee99]

2. Is questioning relatives based on a familial DNA match

really the same thing as "police cameras in our bedrooms or tracking our whereabouts with subcutaneous computer chips"?