Crime Lab Audits Raise More Questions About DNA Law

Recent audits of the Connecticut State Police crime lab revive serious questions about the state's plan to begin an invasive DNA collection initiative on Oct. 1, 2011, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.

The Connecticut Legislature has recently passed Bill No. 6489, which requires a person simply arrested for a serious felony to give their DNA. But the state's ability to process the DNA samples properly and in a timely manner has been called into question by the audits, which found massive backlogs and deficiencies in the processing of DNA samples at the lab.

"Expansion of DNA collection to include people who should be presumed innocent is disturbing, and evidence that these records may be inaccurate and stored without enough security to protect them from tampering is frightening." said David McGuire, staff attorney for the ACLU of Connecticut. "We have warned that the law undermines the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. These audits show an increasing risk to our criminal justice system from inaccurate DNA records and a massive forensic backlog that is already denying defendants the constitutional right to a speedy trial."

According to The Hartford Courant, the audits by a division of the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the lab is already "staggering under a backlog of 3,900 forensic cases."

"The DNA audit team raised questions about supervision, reporting of case results, evidence control, data security, quality assurance, adherence to standard operating procedures for DNA analyses, and validation techniques for DNA test results, among other issues," The Courant reported.