Gov. Martin O?Malley wants DNA samples collected from all people charged with violent crimes, even if they haven?t been convicted, he said Thursday.
O?Malley said his proposed expansion of sampling, which would include those arrested for burglary, would help deter violent criminals from repeating their crimes and help exonerate the innocent, he said.
“It will help to increase the reservoir of information that law enforcement has to solve these crimes and make Maryland one of the safest states in the Union,” O?Malley said.
Under current law, DNA samples are collected only from convicted felons. The proposed legislation is modeled on a Virginia law that has been in place since 1998 and significantly helped close cold cases there, Attorney General Doug Gansler said. Since then, 11 other states have expanded DNA sampling to include anyone arrested for a violent crime.
Civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have voiced concerns about the proposal, which has been unsuccessfully challenged in other states based on constitutional rights against self-incrimination and certain searches.
“This is not investigatory DNA sample collection,” said Cindy Boersma, the ACLU?s legislative director. “This is dragnet database building for people who have not been convicted of a crime and still retain all of their Fourth Amendment rights.”
Gansler said he believes DNA samples ? collected from the inside of the mouth with a cotton swab ? are no more invasive than mug shots and fingerprints. Gansler said he used forensic evidence to successfully prosecute a violent rapist who attacked a Montgomery County woman ? but only after the rapist was arrested for burglary in Virginia, where his DNA was collected.
“That man will spend the rest of his life in jail because of the law they have in Virginia,” Gansler said. “That type of situation will exist in Maryland in the future.”
Maryland?s forensic scientists last year eliminated a backlog of 24,300 samples, O?Malley said. He made the announcement at the Maryland State Police forensics laboratory, the first in many events planned to discuss his legislative proposals for the General Assembly session, which started Wednesday.
