A Not So Perfect Match

How Near-DNA Matches Can Incriminate Relatives Of Criminals

(CBS)  This segment was originally broadcast on April 1, 2007. It was updated on July 15, 2007.

There's a new saying in law enforcement circles these days: don't do the crime if your brother's doing time. And the reason for that is the power of DNA.

As 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, every state in this country collects DNA from convicted felons and loads it into computer databases, all linked together by the FBI. When detectives find DNA at a crime scene, they run it through that database looking for a perfect match. You see this on crime shows all the time.

But sometimes a search yields a not so perfect match but a partial match, in which case it's clear that the felon in the database did not commit the crime. But the DNA is so similar, maybe their father, mother, or brother did.

This raises a dilemma: should police start investigating those family members, or is that going too far?

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"These are important scientific leads that need to be run down. And the fact that we can't run them down in this country I think is shameful," says Mitch Morrissey, the district attorney of Denver, Colo.

Morrissey runs one of the most aggressive cold case projects in the country. On three separate occasions over the last few years, his team ran DNA from unsolved rapes through the DNA database and came up with partial hits.

In these three cases, Morrissey says there wasn't a perfect match, but that the matches were very close.

Morrissey wanted the names of those felons, so he could investigate their family members, but he was told that FBI policy prohibits states from sharing names with one another unless it’s a perfect match.

"This isn't car break-ins. These are the type of people that will attack women. And continually do it until you catch them. And I think that the FBI, my office, the Denver Police Department, owe it to victims, and potential victims to run down these leads," Morrissey argues.

60 Minutes asked Angelo Della Manna, head of DNA analysis for the state of Alabama, for a crash course in how DNA profiles and matches work.

He showed Stahl the DNA profile of one individual. In a visual profile, one can see 13 pairs of peaks, or "alleles," which are then represented as numbers. One number in each pair comes from the mother; one from the father.

"When you look at this, can you tell me what color eyes that person has, or how tall they are? Or anything like that?" Stahl asks.

"No, not at all," Della Manna says. "The areas that we look at are commonly referred to as in the junk DNA."

When Della Manna runs a sample from a crime scene through the DNA database and gets a perfect match, the numbers are identical in both profiles. But sometimes he gets a partial match, where all but a few numbers are the same.

"These partial matches kind of hit you between the eyes and you say, 'Well, it's obviously not this person.' But when you look at the profile as a whole, there's a lot of sharing there," he explains. "Statistically, there's a strong likelihood that you're looking at the biological relative of the rapist or the source of this crime scene sample."

Criminologists have long known that crime tends to run in families: one study found that 51 percent of inmates in state prisons had a family member who had also been incarcerated. In fact, a statistical analysis last year in the journal "Science" found that if we used our DNA database to deliberately look for family members, it could yield 40 percent more hits.

"Now you’re subjecting a whole new class of innocent people to genetic surveillance by the government," argues Stephen Mercer, a Maryland attorney who specializes in issues involving DNA.

"With this new technology, no one has ever considered, 'Well, if my brother's DNA ends up in the database, and he's forfeited his privacy rights by becoming a convicted felon, has he also forfeited my privacy rights, as well, as a wholly innocent family member,'" Mercer says. "That puts me under lifelong genetic surveillance."

Speaking with D.A. Morrissey, Stahl points out, "The other side of the argument is that this is genetic surveillance and that it invades innocent people's privacy. And that this is America and we don't do that."

"Let me give you an example. Say we have a hit and run accident where someone was killed. And we have witnesses that say, 'This is the color of the car. This is the style of the car. But I only got the first three license plate numbers' … Only a partial. What should the police do? Just say, 'Oh no, it's only partial, so we're not gonna do anything.' Or should they go to your motor vehicle database and they may talk to 20 people that weren't involved in the accident at all. And I'll tell ya, most of those people are gonna tell ya, 'Thanks for looking into this. Because we hope you solve the case,'" Morrissey says.

[davidel1]

I yhink Lesley Stahl had a go0od point raising partial auto license plate numbers as an analogy to partial deny matches.The analogy is een closer if one recalls that in many states such as California, the first four characters in a license plate tell a lot about the economic position of the owners

0191 very old car-- very poor owner?
1ABC old car poor owner
5ZYX very new car-- affluent owner
RAy1 PERSONALIZED PLATE-- OLDER MONEY - PROUD OWNER
i GUESS MANY FORMS OF EVIDENCE HAVE SOCIAL OR ECONOMIC BAGGAGE J
JUSR ASDNA does..

[dcginsberg]

I think both sides make valid points and the question is whether they can be reconciled. I suggest a compromise where partial matches could be used only for certain defined serious cases, and only with the approval of a judge, and only for approved relatives (i.e. in a rape case you could not test a suspect's sister just to see if you can link her to different crime).

To protect privacy, non-perfect matches could not be kept. Some people understandably don't trust the government. At least a partial safeguard would be that if a prosecutor later arrests one of those relatives for some other reason, and they catch the person from looking up their DNA in the database, a judge could throw out the case because the evidence was illegally obtained.

There is potential for this to be abused, but it seems like a fair balance.

[dcginsberg]

I think both sides make valid points and the question is whether they can be reconciled. I suggest a compromise where partial matches could be used only for certain defined serious cases, and only with the approval of a judge, and only for approved relatives (i.e. in a rape case you could not test a suspect's sister just to see if you can link her to different crime).

To protect privacy, non-perfect matches could not be kept. Some people understandably don't trust the government. At least a partial safeguard would be that if a prosecutor later arrests one of those relatives for some other reason, and they catch the person from looking up their DNA in the database, a judge could throw out the case because the evidence was illegally obtained.

There is potential for this to be abused, but it seems like a fair balance.

[dcginsberg]

I think both sides make valid points and the question is whether they can be reconciled. I suggest a compromise where partial matches could be used only for certain defined serious cases, and only with the approval of a judge, and only for approved relatives (i.e. in a rape case you could not test a suspects' sister just to see if you can link her to different crime).

To protect privacy, non-perfect matches could not be kept. Some people understandably don't trust the government. At least a partial safeguard would be that if a prosecutor later arrests one of those relatives for some other reason, and they catch the person from looking up their DNA in the database, a judge could throw out the case because the evidence was illegally obtained.

There is potential for this to be abused, but it seems like a fair balance.

[emmac6]

They should use DNA in any way they can to help catch a violent criminal like a rapist or murderer. Non-violent crimes I can understand withholding the DNA evidence but for violent crimes there should absolutely be able to use the partial DNA.

[njva17420]

HeywoodFloyd's analogy is no more logical than the one he (she?) criticized. Analogies -- however helpful to the ones making them -- are usually sufficiently flawed to be useless in an argument or debate.

[klingon69]

hmmm;
Seems on the Duke rape case, all three were exonerated from having committed the alleged rape, but due to a twisted DA, who was just looking to get reelected, all 3 were still held.
Seems the alledged victim did have traces on dna from 5 different sources, but none from the 3 accused.
I feel that even with dna matching, there will still be those who will pursue for a conviction regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

[heywoodfloyd-2009]

I cannot believe I am the first to offer this observation; someone else must have suggested something similar and I just missed it.

One of the interviewees suggested a comparison of DNA typing to automobile license plates, saying that everyone has those and the police can look up that information any time they need to. The conclusion to jump to is, of course, that the analogy holds for DNA typing, as well. I%u2019m sorry to say the analogy does not hold.

Everyone%u2019s car has a license plate to show that the car is properly registered to someone entitled (literally entitled) to own it %u2013 indicating all the requisite fees have been paid and insurance is in place. We are not obligated to display or even maintain any credentials for our DNA. To do so would amount (if I may be allowed my own analogy) to a requirement for a trip plan every time we took our car away from the curb %u2013 listing where we were going and when we could be expected to arrive. I, for one, do not care to submit my travel plans for anyone's approval when I drive my car, and I don%u2019t imagine anyone else does, either. Nor do I care to care to have my DNA typed and catalogued with any government agency, %u201Cjust in case.%u201D

I do not have an alternative to offer, but I will not willingly provide my DNA for wholesale speculative data mining. All our experience with government has shown that the power to gather information about us is always abused and never relinquished.

[heywoodfloyd-2009]

I cannot believe I am the first to offer this observation; someone else must have suggested something similar and I just missed it.

One of the interviewees suggested a comparison of DNA typing to automobile license plates, saying that everyone has those and the police can look up that information any time they need to. The conclusion to jump to is, of course, that the analogy holds for DNA typing, as well. I%u2019m sorry to say the analogy does not hold.

Everyone%u2019s car has a license plate to show that the car is properly registered to someone entitled (literally entitled) to own it %u2013 indicating all the requisite fees have been paid and insurance is in place. We are not obligated to display or even maintain any credentials for our DNA. To do so would amount (if I may be allowed my own analogy) to a requirement for a trip plan every time we took our car away from the curb %u2013 listing where we were going and when we could be expected to arrive. I, for one, do not care to submit my travel plans for anyone's approval when I drive my car, and I don%u2019t imagine anyone else does, either. Nor do I care to care to have my DNA typed and catalogued with any government agency, %u201Cjust in case.%u201D

I do not have an alternative to offer, but I will not willingly provide my DNA for wholesale speculative data mining. All our experience with government has shown that the power to gather information about us is always abused and never relinquished.

[njva17420]

I think we heard enough from attorney Mercer, who just seemed to project an ACLU-type position (i.e. civil rights without civil responsibilities, as it often seems). I would be more interested in hearing about the actual experiences that Jccamelot and others have alluded to before using them as a basis for rejecting the DNA-sharing proposal.

[jccamelot]

I am sorry Mr. Mercer wasn't given more time to expand on his side. As a family member that has been through this Family DNA, I can tell you that YES, they can KICK your door in and YES they can handcuff you AND take your DNA against your will. It doesn't matter if you have been a law abiding citizen all your life.
Does anybody in their right mind think the FBI is going to destroy their DNA when they are finised? Not to leave out the State's sample as well.
I would truly love to hear more from Mr. Mercer on this subject.

[pdx007]

That guy Stephen Mercer is wrong to characterize this as "survellience."

Survellience implies that you are under suspicion before something happens. A crime would have to be committed first before DNA testing would come into play. Again, what is important is the sequence of events. Nobody is asking for the DNA of relatives who are already in the databank. That would be profiling and wrong. A crime would have to be committed and a close DNA match would have to occur first. THAT is perfectly reasonable.

[agnim]

"Which raises a dilemma: should police start investigating those family members, or is that going too far?"

Well duh!

Of course you check the family member! It would be dumb not to.

For better or for worse, we do NATURALLY ride the coattails of those who are near and dear.

[anopinion1]

If you are innocent - you have NOTHING - NOTHING to worry about!!
Posted by ndg1979 at 01:37 AM : Apr 02, 2007

EXACTLY, They SHOULD be able to go after family members when the partial match is seen. Its not like they would be sending a swat team into all of the persons family members houses and demanding dna samples. Their is other ways. Like the cigarette butt trick from the article.

and as ndg1979 said IF YOU ARE INNOCENT THE WHO CARES IF ANYONE MAY HAVE BEEN WATCHING YOU FOR A DAY or 2 TRYING TO GET A DNA SAMPLE. Maybe their work will save one of your family members from getting raped or killed by one of these psychos.

[spencer8027]

Guilty until proven Innocence
The concern I have is not that DNA would not help solve crimes faster and efficiently. The concern is on the application of this law. The Patriot Act has been abused and Law Enforcement agents have used that tool to spy on innocent people and most of whom, their lives were destroyed. Yes! Our privacy has gone to the dogs, but I won't give them additional tool to harass and abuse innocent people. Saying we have privacy is saying that 9/11 happened because the terrorists were jealous of our freedom. Law Enforcement officers need to be properly trained, paid a decent wage, and send out there to investigate crimes. Some of you are talking out of two corners of your mouth until it happens to you, then you would want justice. Ask some innocent Muslims and Hindus who have been the major targets since 9/11 how their private lives have been. This is not a Race issue; it's an issue of proper method of crime investigation. People are supposed to be Innocent until evidence proves them guilty. We have a very flawed criminal Justice system and the sensationalism of the media adds additional salt to the wound. To all the non-black people on this site, I suggest you open your eyes to the Race issue and honestly look at things without prejudice. There is Racism...in this country you have to be blind not to see it. There are Black Racists and as well as White racists.

[iamspace]

If DNA is to be used for implicating people in crimes, then what is to stop ANYONE from collection a sample from ANYONE else, and planting it as a frame?

[iamspace]

If DNA is to be used for implicating people in crimes, then what is to stop ANYONE from collection a sample from ANYONE else, and planting it as a frame?

[dog-x8]

ndg1979, AMEN!

[ndg1979]

Amazing how you are all worried about your privacy. Do you realize that right now - YOU HAVE NONE!! All of your "private" information is just a click or a dollar away for anyone who wants it.

Do you think that the government is keeping your information private? Nonsense. Do you honestly believe the Patriot Act is patriotic towards Americans? There is nothing private in this world anymore. Look at YouTube and mySpace for example.

As for this becoming a case of racism - NOT A CHANCE. If the African-American population is freaked about the fact that 3/4 of the prison population is black, then they should look at why that is. There is something ridiculously wrong here. And saying it is a matter of civil or any rights is also wrong - they are no longer slaves and have been granted ALL the same rights as anyone else - including the right to be convicted for wrongdoing.

Time to wake up America - let DNA free the innocent and charge the guilty - no matter what. If you are innocent - you have NOTHING - NOTHING to worry about!!

[dog-x8]

kmr83159 you are so right about racism. If they had everyones DNA, well, --if the shoe fits----