A court halted the use of a crime-fighting tool that has helped crack cold cases but has also raised privacy and racial discrimination concerns.
A New York court halted the use of a DNA crimefighting tool that has helped crack cold cases and put murderers behind bars, but has also raised privacy and racial discrimination concerns, because state lawmakers never approved the practice.
Three of the panel's five members voted to suspend the searches, which were challenged by a group of Black men who worried they could be targeted for investigation because their biological brothers were convicted of crimes and had genetic information stored in the state's DNA databank. The ruling pertains only to the state's DNA databank, which is populated with samples from people convicted of crimes in the state, not databanks that are maintained by private companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe for genetic genealogy research.
Janine Kava, a spokesperson for the Division of Criminal Justice Services, said the agency was reviewing the decision to determine next steps. Those could include bringing the matter to the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals. Lawmakers debated further expanding the use of the databank over the years, but never passed legislation authorizing familial searches. That led the Division of Criminal Justice Services and the Commission on Forensic Science to take action on their own. The commission voted to allow familial DNA searches in murder, rape and some other cases, including times when it could help exonerate someone already convicted.
The suit raised concerns that innocent people could be ensnared in a criminal investigation"based solely on their genetic kinship with convicted individuals."
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