Arrest Warrant Based Only on Genetic Code Is Upheld

A judge late Friday upheld an arrest warrant issued against a rape suspect identified only by a genetic code in what is believed to be the nation’s first ruling of its kind.

Superior Court Judge Tani Cantil-Sakauye said she was doing what has never been done before.

“This is uncharted water. It’s a novel theory,” she said after a daylong hearing in a case testing fundamental constitutional rights.

Prosecutors nationwide are watching the case and say a favorable ruling would provide them with a powerful tool as modern databases become filled with criminals’ genetic codes.

Johnny Griffin III, the attorney for the suspected rapist, said he would appeal the ruling. He said the warrant did not describe the suspect with “reasonable particularity,” the legal standard that the nation’s highest courts have required in describing suspects in warrants.

“This is not consistent with the intent and spirit of the law,” Griffin said.

The arrest warrant was issued last August, two days before the six-year statute of limitations would have expired in the 1994 rape of a Sacramento woman at her apartment building. In an unorthodox use of science to sidestep the statute of limitations, the warrant was issued, not against a known suspect, but against a genetic code of the semen sample taken six years earlier from the woman.

A month later, after the statute of limitations would have expired, the DNA sample was matched with Paul Robinson and he was arrested.

Robinson’s blood was in a state database because of an earlier assault conviction. The California statute of limitations has since been extended to 10 years.

Prosecutor Anne Marie Schubert urged the judge to uphold the search warrant.

“I’m well aware we are in unique territory,” she said. “It is clear that DNA is the most identifying method of identification.”

The judge said courts have demanded reasonable descriptions of suspects in warrants to preclude arresting or searching the wrong people. But forensic science, she said, has provided a new method to describe suspects in warrants.

“As of this date, DNA is unalterable and appears to be the best identifier,” Cantil-Sakauye said.

She suspended the prosecution of Robinson, who is being held without bail, until a higher court rules in a case that is likely to be decided by the California Supreme Court or, perhaps, the U.S. Supreme Court.

States across the nation have begun issuing arrest warrants against genetic codes to beat statutes of limitations--yet Robinson has been the only one arrested.

“This is an important case,” Milwaukee prosecutor Norm Gahn said in a recent interview. In 1999, he was the nation’s first prosecutor to persuade a judge to issue an arrest warrant against a DNA profile. That case involved the rape of a 7-year-old girl attacked on her way to school.