Editorial: DAs need fund for DNA match

March 26, 2006

Nearly lost amid the recent intrigue of Rep. Elton Gallegly's sudden retirement and his equally shocking return to the campaign was news about a bill the congressman has introduced to provide money for DNA prosecutions.

The Simi Valley Republican's legislation, "Grants for DNA Backlog Prosecutions Act," would dole out federal funding for five years to help local prosecutors pursue "cold hit" cases — those in which DNA on file matches evidence in a previously unsolved violent crime.

The bill, which stalled last year, has now been incorporated as a provision in the "Children's Safety Act," which recently passed the House by a vote of 371-52.

Along with the Gallegly DNA provision, the proposed legislation would, among other things, create a national Web site that could be used to track child sex offenders and increase criminal penalties against child sexual predators.

Mr. Gallegly's proposed funding will clearly help an already underfunded system. In the face of declining local and state budgets, any additional money is greatly needed by prosecutors handling an ever-growing number of DNA cases, which, for the most part, tend to be complex murder and sexual assault crimes.

The Star hopes lawmakers approve this crime legislation — currently awaiting action in the Senate — including Rep. Gallegly's vital funding provision.

In California, there has been a dramatic increase in DNA prosecutions due, in part, to the passage of Proposition 69 in November 2004. The voter-approved initiative requires the state to collect DNA samples from all convicted felons to be fed into a statewide database.

Currently, according to the state's District Attorneys Association, this database averages about three cold-hit cases a day. In Ventura County alone, District Attorney Greg Totten reports that DNA cold hits could identify perpetrators in an estimated 250 to 300 unsolved crimes, some dating back 20 years.

"We are currently prosecuting two cold-hit murders, one dating back to 1991," Mr. Totten wrote in a March 12 commentary that appeared in The Star. "Both cases were solved when crime-scene DNA profiles were matched to profiles of known felons in the database."

However, neither Proposition 69 nor a law signed by President Bush in October that authorizes crime-scene DNA samples to be processed and entered into a database, provided the funding needed to prosecute when a DNA match is made.

The past decade has seen great advances in the use of DNA evidence. Its usefulness has been shown to cut both ways — to convict and to exonerate.

But, if DNA technology is ever to reach its full potential of ensuring accuracy and bringing fairness to the nation's criminal justice system, prosecutors must be given the needed resources.