NYSDA Releases Comments on Proposal to Require DNA Samples in All Misdemeanor Guilty Pleas

ALBANY, NY (08/20/2010)(readMedia)-- The Acting Commissioner of the State Division of Criminal Justice Services yesterday urged New York prosecutors to condition all misdemeanor plea bargains on submission by clients of a DNA sample. This approach to crime-fighting runs the risk of increasing rather than reducing the numbers of wrongly convicted people. For practical, fiscal, and policy reasons we strongly oppose this idea.

DNA analysis is as subject to human error and corruption as any other endeavor. Rigorous protections need to accompany any major expansion of the DNA database. Those protections – mandating external blind proficiency testing of DNA laboratories, assuring the independence of those laboratories, eliminating rogue databases, and assuring training, staffing, and supervision – require additional resources. Such resources have not been forthcoming and do not accompany this recommendation by DCJS.

The New York State Assembly passed a bill this session that would have expanded the DNA database. But district attorneys objected to the bill's common sense provisions to combat wrongful convictions. Instead of seeking to bypass the Legislature, the Division of Criminal Justice Services should work to enact protections against conviction of the innocent as part of any DNA databank expansion.

Proponents of the policy offer examples of a few perpetrators of serious crimes who might have been identified earlier through increases in the DNA database. But it does not follow that New York State should flood its database with samples taken from hundreds of shoplifters and other minor offenders.

By adding an onerous and legally questionable condition to the resolution of hundreds of thousands of minor criminal cases in New York, DCJS' proposal would needlessly delay proceedings, reduce pleas of guilty, and ultimately jeopardize the integrity of convictions. Even those who believe it is wise policy should today, in the midst of a budget crisis providing no resources for its careful and prudent implementation, oppose this idea.