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December 6, 2011
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Senator Pileggi's Legislation to Strengthen DNA Laws Passes Senate

Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies will be able to make better use of DNA evidence under legislation sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-9) which was approved by the Senate today.

Senate Bill 775 will require individuals arrested for serious crimes to submit DNA samples, and it will authorize a new type of DNA search to help identify suspects in unsolved crimes.

"DNA science has advanced dramatically in the nearly two decades since Pennsylvania's DNA Database was created," said Senator Pileggi. "In recent years, the federal government and 26 other states – including our neighboring states of Maryland, New Jersey, and Ohio – have improved their DNA collection and testing policies. Pennsylvania has not. This bill updates our law to ensure that Pennsylvania investigators have access to the most efficient scientific tools to fight crime."

Senator Pileggi's legislation – which is supported by the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, and the national nonprofit organization DNA Saves – will:

• Expand the eligible criminal offenses for which DNA testing is required;
• Require pre-conviction DNA testing for those arrested for certain serious offenses;
• Explicitly prohibit DNA samples from being used for anything other than legitimate law enforcement identification purposes;
• Require the immediate destruction of DNA records of exonerated individuals;
• Authorize the state police to use modified DNA searches to help investigators identify unknown DNA profiles taken at crime scenes;
• Codify accreditation requirements for forensic DNA testing laboratories; and
• Require continuing education for forensic DNA testing personnel.

Chris Asplen, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Executive Director of the U.S. Department of Justice's National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence, said the overall impact of Senate Bill 775 "will be measured in people's lives."

"Allowing police to take DNA at arrest, as they do with fingerprints, simply allows police to begin to leverage our most powerful forensic tool at an earlier and thus more important part of an investigation," said Asplen, who is also the former director of the DNA Unit for the National District Attorney's Association and a former senior deputy district attorney in Bucks County. "In doing so, they protect more victims from attack and more innocent individuals from wrongful arrest and conviction."

Jayann Sepich, founder of DNA Saves, has worked to have similar legislation enacted across the country. In 2003, her daughter – a 22-year-old graduate student at New Mexico State University – was raped and murdered.

"She had skin and blood from her attacker under her fingernails," Sepich said. "But in New Mexico at that time, you could not take DNA from individuals upon arrest so the value of that evidence was significantly reduced. It made no sense to me."

Sepich successfully advocated for a law in New Mexico to allow authorities to take a DNA sample from arrestees – an unobtrusive process which involves lightly swabbing the inside of an individual's cheek.

"I've seen this work," she said. "One hour and 14 minutes after that law went into effect, the first arrestee in New Mexico was swabbed. He was later identified as a suspect in a double murder, for which he was later convicted. We are bringing horrible monsters to justice who we might not otherwise be able to identify. What that means to me is that there are other mothers who won't have to bury their daughters."

Passage of Senate Bill 775 will put Pennsylvania "in the forefront of modern DNA database legislation," said David H. Kaye, Distinguished Professor and Weiss Family Scholar at Penn State University's Dickinson School of Law, and a member of the graduate faculty for Penn State's Forensic Science program.

Modified DNA searches assist investigators by identifying DNA profiles taken at crime scenes that contain enough common characteristics to indicate that the source of the crime-scene profile could be a close relative of an offender whose profile is already in the database. Several other states, including California, Colorado and Virginia, now use similar DNA searches.

Senate Bill 775 will allow the name of the offender already in the database to be released to law enforcement officials – under certain conditions – to allow further investigation into whether or not a relative was the source of the crime-scene DNA sample.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a comprehensive public hearing on Senate Bill 775 on March 18, 2011.

Senate Bill 775 now moves to the State House for consideration.

More information about state issues is available at Senator Pileggi's website, www.SenatorPileggi.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SenatorPileggi, or on Twitter at twitter.com/SenatorPileggi.