Law Officials Ready to Start Expanding DNA Database

Despite the threat of a lawsuit, justice officials said Wednesday that they are ready to quickly expand a DNA database designed to catch criminals, after voters overwhelmingly authorized it.

Approved by 61.8% of voters on Tuesday, Proposition 69 mandates that DNA be taken from every adult and juvenile convicted of a felony in California and from every adult arrested for certain felonies, including sex offenses, murder and voluntary manslaughter.

In one year, testing all 200,000 people convicted of felonies in the state, on average, would almost double the size of California’s existing database.

Law enforcement officials have used that 10-year-old database to catch more than 1,000 criminals, including alleged Los Angeles serial killer Chester Turner last month.

“They know it is just a matter of time before we catch them, thanks to this proposition,” said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, calling passage a victory for crime victims.

California joins 35 other states that require testing for convicted felons. But the measure also requires that starting in 2009, every adult arrested on suspicion of any felony be tested -- the part of the initiative that civil libertarians have most strongly opposed. Only Louisiana now requires such testing.

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, called the measure cumbersome, costly and a blow to the presumption of innocence. She said the ACLU is considering a lawsuit. “There is a big difference between people who have been arrested and people who have been convicted,” Ripston said. “An arrest doesn’t mean you are guilty.”

Cooley said similar legal challenges have not succeeded elsewhere. He said collecting DNA is no more intrusive than taking fingerprints.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Kahn, who helped draft the proposition, said prosecutors in Los Angeles plan to ask that jailers start taking oral swabs next week from inmates after they have been sentenced.

Kahn said the proposition is simple to implement because it authorizes mouth swabs. Trained deputies can take the samples, much as detectives in sex crime cases have done for years. The swabs will be sent to the state Department of Justice laboratory in Richmond, Calif., for analysis and storage.

The lab is prepared for the flood of new samples, said Lance Gima, chief of the state’s Bureau of Forensic Services.

The lab would use robotics technology, which can process 96 samples at a time, to handle swab samples. Gima said 15 new technicians will be hired in the next six months and 70 overall.

“We are going to be ready,” said Gima. “We’ve been planning as best we can, not knowing if the proposition was going to pass.”

The lab now analyzes more than 60,000 samples a year. The lab also uploaded 7,500 samples into the national DNA database this year, up from 2,000 samples last year.

Kahn said costs of the testing, estimated by the state at $50 per person, will be covered by a surcharge that would add $1 to every $10 in court fines handed down for infractions, misdemeanors and felonies. That will raise $20 million to $25 million annually. Critics have charged that the true cost of each test could be as high as $317.

But the costs are outweighed by savings in time and resources, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said. “It’s not something that’s going to be done cheaply,” he said. “But you’re going to have to pay now or much more later.”

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton agreed that “this will save 10 times as much money as it costs. I’m very excited about the way DNA technology can make even the hardest of cases solvable.”

Bruce Harrington, the Newport Beach developer who invested $1.95 million in the Proposition 69 campaign, called the victory “bittersweet.” His brother and sister-in-law were killed in 1980 in a case that is unsolved.

“My brother Keith and his wife didn’t die in vain,” Harrington said. “The public is street-smart. They understood DNA technology. They see it on TV crime shows. They know it is a friend of the public.”

Both Turner and Mark Rathbun, convicted as the Belmont Shore rapist, would have been caught long before they attacked many of their victims if the expanded database had been in place, Cooley said.

Criminalists extract DNA from bodily fluids and incorporate genetic-marker technology to develop a DNA profile. The profile is searched against the DNA databank.

Cooley cited the case of Ivan Hill, who has been charged with five murders. “He wrote a letter to his brother from prison that we seized with a search warrant that said, ‘DNA is going to get me in the end.’ And it did.”