Read any good books lately?

Well, if you are interested in ‘whodunnit’ type ‘CSI’ books, you will find the below article taken from the  from the New York Review of Books, fascinating. It talks directly of the book written by Brandon Garrett: “Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong,” a book published by Harvard University Press. It deals with false confessions, invalid forensic analysis, eyewitness misidentifications and other systemic flaws in the criminal justice system which contributed to the wrongful conviction of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA tests in the USA. If this is just up your alley, then settle down and read more …. I know that I for one am going to be ordering the book today! Vanessa Lynch

Let the DNA Fit the Crime by Richard C. Lewontin

Hercule Poirot has an easy time of it. He needs only the logic provided by his “little gray cells” to discern, unerringly, which of the dozen or so guests at the country house or passengers in the sleeping coach have committed the crime, nor is there any doubt that those responsible would be found guilty were a trial to be held. But what is a real-life New York investigative police officer to do when, in a city with a population of four million males, a savage rape has left its victim lying unconscious in a remote spot, permanently unable to recall any detail of the attack? One obvious direction of investigation is to connect it with some other violence that took place near the same place at around the same time.

At around 9:00 in the evening of April 19, 1989, a young woman entered Central Park near the Metropolitan Museum and headed north intent on an evening jog. At about the same time a large group of Latino and black teenagers intent on a macho adventure entered the park at its northeast corner and headed south. It seems very likely from the layout of the paths in the park that the boys’ southward route overlapped with the jogger’s northward way.

After a number of aggressive encounters with passersby including one serious beating, the group slowly broke up and five of them left the park on the west side where they were arrested by the police, to whom their behavior had been reported. Much later, at about 1:30 AM, the blood-drenched body of the raped, half-conscious Patricia Meili was discovered by two passersby not far from where two of the gang’s aggressive encounters had been reported. She has never been able to recall the details of the attack or her attackers. The police investigators made what must have seemed to them an obvious connection. The “Central Park Five” became the center of the rape investigation.

In dealing with the suspects, the police used the classic “good cop, bad cop” technique. The boys were alternately shouted at and treated sympathetically in order to get them to confess. They were promised that if they confessed they would be allowed to go home. Eventually they all confessed to having observed the rape, either from afar or having held the woman down while another member of the group actually raped her, but none admitted to the rape itself. Their stories were inconsistent with one another and with the actual condition in which the victim’s injured body was found. For example, despite her bloody condition, there were no bloodstains on any of the accused’s clothing. It seems clear that these immature boys, desperate to escape the conditions in which they were held, and perhaps reasoning that they would not, in the end, be held responsible for something they did not do, were willing to give the police what they wanted.

In this they were mistaken. In preparing for their indictment, the prosecutors arranged for a test of the DNA samples taken from Meili’s cervical swab. Only a weak pattern was found, but it did not match the DNA of any of the five defendants. On learning of the result the lead prosecutor told one of the other attorneys that “I feel I have been kicked in the stomach,” but that did not cause her to look elsewhere for the rapist. Then, in the middle of the trial, the New York Police Department’s serologist, Mary Veit, found a much larger semen stain on one of Meili’s socks and when the DNA was tested this showed conclusively that none of the defendants had left it.

Nevertheless, the prosecution persisted and, based on the confessions, convinced the jury to convict all five. They spent between six and thirteen years in prison. While the last to be released was still serving his term, he was approached by another prisoner, Matias Reyes, who confessed to being the real Central Park attacker, and whose DNA, when tested, showed him to be a serial rapist, responsible for a large number of unsolved attacks. Nevertheless, various members of the New York Police Department and the district attorney’s office continued to insist that justice had been done, that Reyes’s confession was false, and that the DNA evidence was inconclusive. Still, the convictions were vacated in 2002 and the young men have sued the city of New York for “malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress.” The city is contesting their lawsuit.

This case is not unique, even in its details. In 1991 in Chicago, five young men, the “Dixmoor Five,” were accused of the rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and were convicted after their confessions to the police, despite exculpatory DNA evidence. Only in 2011 did the state’s attorney move to vacate the convictions on the basis of the DNA test. Three years later a prostitute was raped and strangled on the South Side of Chicago and four boys were convicted of the crime after confessing to police interrogators who promised to let them go home if they confessed. One of them describes a familiar situation:

I was 17, I’d never been in any type of trouble like that…. I didn’t know the weight or the magnitude of what a confession could do. It cost me 17 years of my life.

Only last summer, a long-belated examination of DNA evidence pointed, in fact, to a known violent sexual offender who was actually seen in the neighborhood where the body was discovered, and interviewed by the police at the time. Nevertheless, the same state’s attorney had, as of November 15, no plans to dismiss the convictions because “DNA evidence in and of itself is not always the ‘silver bullet’ that it is sometimes perceived to be.” It may not be irrelevant that the probable rapist is now dead so that his trial and conviction are impossible. The exculpation of the convicted youths would then leave the case officially and unsatisfactorily “unsolved” and the state’s attorney with one less success to support her record in office.

The increasing importance that evidence from DNA samples now has in the criminal justice system makes it essential that the general public have a reasonable understanding of the technique involved and the social and ethical issues that are raised by that methodology. For an explication of that technology and how conclusions are drawn from it, and a sophisticated discussion of the social and ethical problems that arise from its broad application, Genetic Justice is required reading. Sheldon Krimsky is chairman of the board of the Council on Responsible Genetics, and Tania Simoncelli was science adviser to the ACLU and now works for the US Food and Drug Administration.

As Krimsky and Simoncelli explain, sprinkled throughout the genome of humans are short pieces of DNA that are repeated in tandem and have no apparent physiological or developmental function (short tandem repeats, or STRs). The basic chunk is usually four nucleotides in length and is made up of some combination of the different nucleotides, adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). There are then 256 possible chunks. One chunk might be, say, ATGG, another GATG, another CATA, etc. In one place on a particular chromosome in one person’s genome there might be three tandemly repeated chunks of a particular kind, say GATGGATGGATG, while someone else might have six repeats of this chunk. Moreover, since everyone has two examples of every chromosome, one inherited from the mother and one from the father, each person has a possibility of different repeat lengths on the two copies of the chromosome. So our hypothetical person could have three repeats on one chromosome and five repeats on the other member of the pair. A different person will have a different number of repeats of the two members of this pair, say twelve and nine.

To identify a person by his or her DNA, forensic scientists have chosen thirteen different STR sites, each on a different one of the twenty-four different chromosomes in the human genome. Each of these sites has its characteristic chunk composition, but there will be immense variation among individuals in any human population in the number of repeated chunks of each of the thirteen kinds. So, for chromosome 7, say, one person might have five repeats on the copy inherited from her father and twelve repeats on the copy inherited from her mother while another person might have inherited three copies from one parent and nine from the other.

The question then is how many people will have the same set of copy number pairs over all thirteen STR sites, since it only takes one difference to rule out someone as having been the source of DNA that has been recovered from a crime scene. Some copy numbers will be very rare in the population and some much more common. The authors give a hypothetical example in which a suspect’s sample has between four and fourteen repeats for different STRs and in which a hypothetical population corresponding roughly to what has been observed in practice has frequencies between .01 and .10 for the thirteen copy number pairs. Multiplying these thirteen frequencies gives the probability of finding by pure chance such an observed DNA type in the hypothetical population. The answer turns out to be about 5 in a billion billion! That is, the suspect’s DNA profile is for practical purposes unique. If such DNA is found at the crime scene, the suspect (or his identical twin) must have been there. Or perhaps not.

Genetic Justice begins with a true story. In 1993 a woman in Germany was strangled to death and some DNA belonging to a woman, not the victim, was found on a teacup. Eight years later, an antiques dealer in another part of Germany was found strangled and the same DNA, not hers, was recovered from items in her shop and the door handle. Then, in 2007, a German policewoman was shot from behind in her patrol car in Heilbronn and again the same DNA was retrieved. After that the same DNA was recovered from numerous crimes of a great variety.

By 2009 “Germany’s most dangerous woman” was wanted for at least forty crimes in Germany, Austria, and France. And then she was found, working in an Austrian factory that manufactured the swabs used by the police to collect DNA at crime scenes. A major problem with DNA as evidence is that we all leave it everywhere that we have been. Cells that are sloughed off our fingers, hairs that we shed, the sneeze that we spray if we do not get to our handkerchiefs in time, the traces of DNA in the saliva with which, old-fashioned as we are, we sealed the envelope of a note to a friend, all contain enough of our DNA to provide a profile to a reasonably competent professional laboratory analyst. It is not sufficient to prove guilt that enough DNA to yield a profile is found somewhere at the scene of a crime. It matters whether the DNA from a rape is found in large quantities on the victim’s underclothes or in her vagina, rather than in trace amounts on her outer garments or other belongings.

Yet another important issue raised by Krimsky and Simoncelli is the problem of technical care and competence, both in collecting samples at crime scenes and in their analysis in police laboratories. There is a great variation in the technical care and competence among various local laboratories. In New York City there is relatively careful quality control. For example, for every DNA crime sample that is analyzed there must be a control run involving a known DNA sequence; and the FBI will not report an analysis based on fewer than ten STR sites. But such ample resources and the scrupulousness of laboratory technicians are not uniform throughout the country. An independent quality control report on the Houston Police Department’s crime laboratory found that among 135 DNA cases reviewed, 43 involved serious analytic errors.

The widespread use of DNA profiles by the police has led, in a number of countries, to the establishment of national computerized data banks to which local departments can contribute and refer. These record the DNA profiles of people arrested, whether or not they have been convicted of a crime, and of DNA collected at crime scenes. In the United States the FBI manages such a database, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which currently contains over eight million records. CODIS, or a similar database in other countries, is used in “dragnets.” If DNA is recovered from a crime scene or taken from anyone remotely connected to a crime, it can be used to search CODIS. If there is a perfect match, a prime suspect has been identified from what is known as a “cold hit.” In case this suspect had already been imprisoned or is dead or otherwise physically removed from any possibility of having committed the crime, one must assume that a laboratory error or a contaminant during the investigation is the source. Putting aside such annoying situations, all other evidence exculpating the suspect is explained away or ignored.

A second form of dragnet does not require perfect matches in CODIS but is based on social presuppositions including racial profiling or on geographic proximity. For example, in a serial rape investigation in Miami, a dragnet by Florida officials asked more than 120 Hispanic males to provide DNA samples, and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, police asked more than 600 black men to submit to DNA testing in another serial rape case, of whom 160 agreed. The latter example exemplifies an important issue in civil liberties and the legality of searches and seizures. The police chief in Ann Arbor threatened that anyone who refused to submit a sample would become an active suspect in the case.

While the probability of finding two unrelated people with the same complete thirteen-site DNA profile is essentially zero, close relatives may have the same profile for part of the thirteen sites. This creates the possibility of “familial searches” for relatives of the actual criminal who might then lead to a final resolution of the case. While only identical twins have identical profiles, full siblings will share, on the average, half of their alleles, as will a parent and offspring, while cousins will share a quarter. Once a group of likely relatives of the guilty person has been identified, the police may then narrow down their search sufficiently to use other information in their search.

Partial-match dragnets and familial searches raise serious issues of civil rights. Both involve taking DNA from the bodies or secretions of persons who have not voluntarily come forward with an offer of their saliva or blood. In many cases a great deal of pressure must be applied in the form of threats against people who have not themselves been charged with any crime, as in the Ann Arbor case, or else there may be surreptitious sampling of objects in their possession. For Krimsky and Simoncelli these are all forms of searches and seizures without legal warrant that are forbidden by the Fourth Amendment. If the police cannot enter my house and search through or seize the physical objects contained in it without a legally obtained warrant, surely my body must be so protected. There is even the question of whether the cells and hair that I shed, the saliva that I deposit on the flap of an envelope, and the feces that I eject are “abandoned” materials and therefore are freely available to investigative authorities (or anyone else who cares to have them). Thus far, the courts have held them to be so, although it is unclear how the judges would proceed against persons who wished to maintain their proprietary rights.

While DNA analysis has become a major tool for the apprehension and conviction of people who have committed acts of violence, it has also led to the exoneration of those who were falsely accused. Krimsky and Simoncelli have both been deeply involved in the struggle to exonerate the innocent. Their book, as might be expected of them, contains chapters on such topics as “Privacy and Genetic Surveillance,” “Racial Disparities in DNA Data Banking,” and “Toward a Vision of Justice: Principles for the Responsible Uses of DNA in Law Enforcement.”

Having read the last chapters of Genetic Justice, one should then turn to Convicting the Innocent by Brandon Garrett, a book devoted to the deliberate use of DNA primarily as a tool for exonerating and freeing those who, for whatever reason, have been falsely convicted and punished. Garrett’s book arises from his longtime association with Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, founders and directors of the Innocence Project, whose purpose is to overturn false convictions through the use of DNA evidence. As of this year more than 250 people, convicted of a variety of serious crimes, have been exonerated by the use of DNA, many of them after years in prison and even the threat of execution.

One of the ironies of that history is that Scheck and Neufeld, together with the author of this review, originally opposed the use of DNA evidence. That is because, in its early stages, DNA identification used DNA variants that differed very much among ethnic and racial groups in their relative proportions. An example was the murder, in a trailer park in northern Vermont, of an Abenaki Indian woman. About a third of the residents of the trailer park were Abenaki in a region with many Abenaki. They have proportions of the various DNA variants that are quite different from Caucasians. An accused Abenaki had DNA that matched blood from the crime scene, but the trailer park is on a main north–south tourist route. So whose population frequencies should have been used in making a case?

All that has changed now. The differences in proportions of the DNA variations currently used in forensic analysis make only a trivial difference in conclusions about incrimination. The Innocence Project can exculpate people beyond any reasonable doubt without having to make arguments about ethnic group differences.

Garrett has chosen to illustrate the various sources of injustice in prosecuting and convicting innocent people. These include false confessions extorted by extreme psychological pressure on vulnerable people who are promised relief (as with the Central Park Five, among many others); misidentification by eyewitnesses who are themselves under police pressure; eyewitness identification from carefully stacked lineups and subject to police management; flawed forensic tests that include hair matching, shoeprints, fingerprints, and voice matching; and out-and-out lying by witnesses or jail informants who have something to gain by making things up.

A uniquely valuable part of Garrett’s book is a statistical appendix that provides a quantitative overview of the false convictions, their consequences, and the factors that contributed to them. For example, 47 percent of exonerations occurred between sixteen and thirty-five years after the original convictions. Of those exonerated, 62 percent were black, and 89 percent were accused of rape. In 74 percent of cases forensic evidence was presented against them and 76 percent of convictions were backed up by eyewitnesses. It is hard to imagine seven pages more damaging to the claims of our system of criminal justice, a system in which careerism is deeply embedded.

In a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine a leading state’s attorney for Lake County, near Chicago, when asked by a reporter for The Chicago Tribune about what seemed to be contradictions in a case, is quoted as replying: “The taxpayers don’t pay us for intellectual curiosity. They pay us to get convictions.” I was immediately reminded of Floria Tosca’s words as she contemplated the fallen police chief Scarpia: “Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma.” Before such prosecutors all America must tremble.

1 For a remarkable essay that places this set of events and the reactions to it in the social and ideological milieu of New York see Joan Didion’s discussion in ” New York: Sentimental Journeys ,” The New York Review , January 17, 1991. Sarah Burns does not mention this brilliant article, which subjected evidence to skeptical analysis and anticipated later revelations. ↩

2 Erica Goode, “When DNA Evidence Suggests ‘Innocent,’ Some Prosecutors Cling to ‘Maybe,'” The New York Times , November 16, 2011. ↩

This article appeared on the LeadSA website

SABC 3 presenter Liezel van der Westhuizen will be teaming up with SA road race champion Robbie Hunter for the 2012 High Five Change a Life Cycle Tour.

About Change a Life Cycle Tour

The annual Change a Life Cycle Tour is the Trust’s main fundraising event – and for those who have participated before it represents both a personal life-changing experience and an opportunity to contribute to the Change a Life projects. It is attended by approximately 75 of South Africa’s leading corporate executives and sports personalities, while SA road race champion Robbie Hunter and Liezel van der Westhuizen have agreed to fly the flag as Change a Life ambassadors.

Who benefits

One of the first projects to receive funding from Change a Life was the DNA Project which advances the use of DNA evidence in bringing criminals to justice. Under the guidance of its founder, Vanessa Lynch, the project has been instrumental in raising awareness and teaching the police and other related groups how to preserve and collect DNA at crime scenes. Vanessa, who left a career in law to work full-time on the DNA Project after her father was murdered, has also lobbied for and supported the introduction of new legislation to govern the use of DNA in crime detection.

The iChoose to Change a Life project provides leadership training to teenage offenders so that they are empowered to walk away from crime and to become respected role models in their own communities.  Carol Podetti-Ngono, the inspirational founder of the Valued Citizens Initiative which drives iChoose to Change a Life introduced the Stand against Crime initiative in South African schools in 2011 to create crime-free school communities. The initiative reaches hundreds of thousands of children and has been highly effective in channelling their energy into crime prevention initiatives.

The remaining three projects all use sport as a primary vehicle to transform the lives of severely disadvantaged young people. The Martin Dreyer Change a Life Academy trains youngsters in rural KwaZulu Natal to become professional athletes, the Allan Thomson Kushido Karate-do inspires children from Drummond and Cosmo City in Gauteng to become productive members of society through the discipline and power of karate, while Nemato Change a Life gives disadvantaged youths in the townships of Port Alfred the mind-set, skills, knowledge and support to become successful in life.

Each of these projects is run by a powerful role model who has achieved success in their own lives and wants to give back to society: Martin Dreyer is a seven-time Dusi Marathon winner and his young beneficiaries can be seen competing for the top positions in the Dusi each year; Allan Thomson holds a black belt in karate and wants to build something positive out of his brother Mike’s tragic death; Jan Blom at Nemato Change a Life has coached Olympic and university rowers in Holland and South Africa and is creating new lives for children who would otherwise face a hopeless future.

The 2012 High Five Tour

The 2012 Cycle Tour takes place on 20 – 25 September and is called the High Five tour in recognition of five years of existence. Having been located in a number of southern African locations in previous years, the tour returns to South Africa this year and will take cyclists on an epic journey through the Waterberg, where they will cycle approximately 550 kms over four days – climbing about 5 000 metres – and experience the thrill of South Africa’s Big Five, the romance of the bushveld and a dramatic twist at the finale.

On 20 September, cyclists will depart on Rovos Rail from Pretoria Station to Pienaars River Station at Carousal. Day 1 of cycling will cover 120 kms of mostly flat road with a sturdy climb over the final 20 km stretch to our destination, the Legend Golf and Safari Resort in the Waterberg. Day 2 will cover 148 kms of undulating terrain to Ellisras and Day 3 offers the greatest challenge with a 215 km undulating ride through bushveld to Vaal water and then back to the Legend resort. Day 4 involves 75 kms, finishing off with a gruelling 9 km uphill time trial, but the spectacular gala dinner at the finale will soothe any the aching limbs anand bruised egos, as will the sense that something truly good will come from their efforts.

We are often asked whether identical twins would be able to get away with committing a crime because their DNA is identical… well here is a case in point:

Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist were set free because neither of them could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence.

It’s what many movies are made of: the perfect crime.

Identical twins Hassan and Abbas O., charged in a spectacular multimillion-dollar jewelry heist in Germany, were set free because their genetic information is identical which means that traces of DNA found at the crime scene failed to provide conclusive evidence for trial.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, Jan. 25 2009, thieves managed to break into Berlin’s famous, luxury department store Kaufhaus des Westens, universally known as KaDeWe, stealing fine jewelry and pricey watches worth $6.5 million.

Surveillance cameras taped three masked men wearing gloves sliding down a rope from a store skylight, evading motion detectors and outsmarting the store’s security system.

The bandits got away that night but left evidence behind: DNA, found in a trace of sweat after police secured a discarded rubber glove at the crime scene.

Investigators ran the material through the German criminal database and came up with the twins Hassan and Abbas O., who both have criminal records for theft and fraud. They cannot be named in full, under German law, which prohibits such suspects from being identified until they are convicted.

The 27-year-old brothers, who live in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, were arrested two weeks after the high-profile incident with police suspecting that at least one of them took part in the theft.

By the end of the week, however, they were released before the case could ever come to trial after confusion over which one of them was the alleged culprit.

DNA Evidence Clouding the Case

“From the evidence we have, we can deduce that at least one of the brothers took part in the crime,” the court wrote in a statement, “but it has not been possible to determine which one.”

When police found traces of DNA on a glove left at the scene of the crime, it seemed that the criminals responsible for Germany’s most spectacular heist in years would be caught. But the DNA led to not one but two suspects — 27-year-old identical, or monozygotic, twins with identical DNA.

German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers was that their twin DNA is so similar that neither could be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. were set free.

Both brothers stolidly refused to comment and since no further evidence has become available, police cannot detain them. According to the daily Berlin newspaper, the twins sent a message that they were “proud of the German constitutional state and gave it their thanks.”

There is still no trace of a third suspect — or the loot!

The overarching objective of Mandela Day is to inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better, and in doing so build a global movement for good. Ultimately it seeks to empower communities everywhere. “Take Action; Inspire Change; Make Every Day a Mandela Day.”

The ability to make changes is in our hands

Make the change: Become a Mandela Day Change-maker

Change was the gift given to all South Africans by Nelson Mandela. Now it’s YOUR turn. In the spirit of Madiba and his vision to spread justice and freedom for all, this is your chance to step up to the plate and become a part of a continuous global movement for good. By becoming a Mandela Day Change-maker you can show that actions speak louder than words by giving to make a positive change to this country. If you don’t have the time to give back, then consider giving R67 to The DNA Project to be a Change-maker: if 1,000 people give R67 each we can raise R67 000 which will provide 84 communities with a free DNA Awareness workshop. How will this be giving back to the greater good of South Africa? Well, for every additional person who can be taught about the importance of preserving crime scene evidence at a crime scene, which will enable Crime Scene Investigators to positively link the perpetrators to the crime, we can ensure that criminals are held accountable for their actions and prevented from committing further crimes, making our society a safer, better place to live.

How do I donate my R67?
Its easy, click here or on the PayPal button

and simply follow the instructions.

Mandela Day is a celebration of our collective power to do good and make an imprint on the world. You can add to the initiative’s momentum by telling as many people as possible about it. Use your own network of friends, media connections, corporates and organisations to get involved and make a difference.

Thank you for your support.

13th June 2012, Good Hope Chambers, Parliament (Cape Town)

Following a morning of presentations by the Civilian Secretariat for Police (Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane), the Secretariat’s Chief Policy Drafter (Bilkis Omar)  as well as a representative from the Forensic Science Laboratory (General Adeline Shezi), the Portfolio Committee for Police (PCP) finally accepted the DNA Policy which will underpin the drafting of the second version of the DNA Bill. The DNA Policy was accepted with the proviso that once the Minister of Police has signed off the Policy, the state law advisors must be instructed to have the DNA Bill ready for review for the Committee by no later than the end of August 2012/beginning September 2012.

Summary of Proceedings:

The morning started off somewhat awry, as we were informed that the Chairperson of the Committee, Sindi Chikunga, had the previous day been appointed as Deputy Minister of Transport by the President. This meant that her position as Chair of the PCP was immediately vacated. The Committee therefore had to nominate an acting Chair, which they (thankfully) did expeditiously and Annelize van Wyk (ANC MP) was voted in as acting chairperson of the Committee until such time as a permanent position has been found.

Gen. Shezi discussing the Policy with the Civilian Secretariat for Police, Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane

The Secretariat’s Chief Policy Drafter, Bilkis Omar, then proceeded to provide an overview of the recommendations contained in the Secretariat’s DNA policy which they had prepared for the Committee.

In summary, the Secretariat’s Policing Policy on the establishment and administration of a DNA Database in South Africa recommended that:

1. the DNA Bill allowed for the current repository of DNA profiles to be expanded by populating it with more DNA profiles from different categories of people in an effort to utilise the DNA Database as a criminal intelligence tool and not just on a case by case basis.

2. the FSL make it a priority to fast track the accreditation process of the forensic science lab. (FSL) and to this end, they requested that the FSL prepare a road map for the Committee as to where they are and how long it will take to complete this crucial process.

3. the custodianship of the Database must remain under the security of the FSL.

4. five categories of indices be created on the Database, namely an arrestee (reference) index, volunteers index, crime scene index, convicted offender index and elimination index.

5. authorised members of SAPS be appointed to collect DNA samples from arrestees and convicted offenders after undergoing training from appointed medical practitioners.

6. reference samples must be taken at specially appointed police stations and in dedicated sample taking rooms at the courts, the location of which must be selected by an oversight body.

7. a framework for the retention, destruction and expungement of different types of samples: crime scene samples to be retained indefinitely; reference samples to be destroyed once a complete profile has been obtained

Vanessa Lynch reading the DNA Policy as presented to the Committee

8. a framework for the retention, destruction and expungement of different types of profiles: arrestees profile to be expunged within 6 months if acquitted or non conviction results; convicted offender profiles to remain on the database for 6 years after release; crime scene profiles to remain indefinitely, volunteer profiles to be expunged within 3 months of being searched against a particular crime and victims’ profiles to be expunged immediately after finalisation of a case.

9. Human rights issues to be considered in the Bill to ensure it falls within the parameters of the rights entrenched in the Constitution, bearing in mind that the rights of individuals have to be balanced against individuals right to safety and security.

10. CODIS, the DNA Database management software which is available free of charge internationally, to be used for the administration of the Database.

11. other relevant departments be consulted where the Bill may have an impact.

12. a phased in implementation to be adopted: two phases were recommended of 18 months each, namely:
Phase 1:
– legislation to be adopted
– oversight body to be established
– identified stations to be accredited
– capacity to be expanded
– forensic awareness campaign to be conducted
– collection of convicted offenders samples to begin
– collection of samples in respect of all other indices to begin

Phase 2:
– Monitoring & Evaluation (‘M&E’) of the first 18 months to be conducted
– impact studies of improvement of hits to be concluded
– sample collection to continue

a two phased implementation plan was proposed

13. An Oversight Body be established which must report to Parliament Annually.

14. DNA legislation to be reviewed every 5 years to address gaps, technological needs and developments and human rights issues, where and if applicable.

Conclusion:

The DNA Policy recommended that South Africa establish a DNA Database as a criminal intelligence tool, to aid in fighting crime and to enhance public confidence while taking into consideration peoples’ Constitutional rights.

Where to from here?

The DNA Project considers the acceptance of the DNA Policy a huge step towards the passing of appropriate legislation to regulate and expand the DNA Database in South Africa. It is however only one step in the process and the next two big steps are going to be:

1. the drafting of the legislation by the state law advisors based on the recommendations contained in the policy.

2. the tabling of the Bill timeously so that the review process may begin.

Vanessa Lynch leaving Parliament, happy that the DNA Policy has been accepted

We will of course keep close tabs on the above two processes and will continue to apply much needed pressure to ensure that this process is not delayed unnecessarily.

The FSL have a huge task ahead of them, as the overall implementation plan presented to the Committee yesterday will not suffice in the review process: it will need to be more fully costed and explained if it is to withstand the rigorous questioning of the Committee in the future.

For now however, let us be happy that for the most part, the most important provisions have been accepted in the policy,  which is what we had hoped for. While some provisions may not be as extensive as we had hoped for, we still have an opportunity during public submissions to argue a case for those points.

And once the Bill has been passed? Then the real work begins…

Vanessa Lynch

Gen Shezi with the Civilian Secretariat Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane

Chief Policy Drafter, Bilkis Omar with the Civilian Secretariat

The Portfolio Committee for Police in session to discuss the DNA Policy

The DNA Policy prepared by the Secretariat for Police will be presented to the Portfolio Committee for Police in Parliament (CT) on Wednesday 13th June 2012 @ 09h00 in the Good Hope Chambers.

The DNA policy will look at the establishment and administration of a National DNA Database in South Africa and is expected to provide guidelines and recommendations as to how South Africa can use a DNA database as a criminal intelligence tool which will help in fighting crime whilst at the same time taking into consideration the rights entrenched in the Constitution.

Vanessa Lynch outside Parliament, Cape Town

Vanessa Lynch, Director and Founder of The DNA Project, will be attending the parliamentary hearing and will be writing up a full report on Wednesday, following the considerations and discussions held in parliament around the above issues on the day.

Parliamentary proceedings are open to the public and press. Should anyone wish to attend this presentation, they must report to Parliament on Wednesday 13th June 2012 and proceed to the Good Hope Chambers before 09H00, at which time the DNA Policy will be discussed.

The following article appeared in the June 2012 edition of The Big Issue

By Gina Ginsberg

Hundreds or more perpetrators of violent crime are getting off scot-free because of a failure to preserve crime scenes that could contain DNA evidence crucial to identifying criminals and putting them behind bars.

This is according to the DNA Project, a non-profit organisation working to ensure justice is meted out to criminals through the proper use of DNA analysis and a national DNA database which would help to nab repeat offenders.

“Crime is so high in South Africa because people act with impunity. There does not seem to be any consequence because there is no evidence collected [to conclusively link them to the crime], so they are able to get away with it, ” said Vanessa Lynch, founder and executive director of the DNA Project,

The Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill of 2009, referred to as the DNA Bill and expected to be tabled in parliament in September, may force important changes in the way police collect and use DNA evidence and how it is stored in a national database.

Lynch welcomed the Bill but slammed government’s tardiness in pushing it through parliament.

“There is no good reason for why we don’t already have a law which regulates the expansion of a DNA database,” she stressed. “Government has a lack of momentum…Delays are unacceptable, the forensic DNA Bill should have been looked at last year.”

Lynch claimed the country’s high violent crime rate, especially rape and murders, could have been reduced had an effective DNA database already been in place.

She added that proper collection of DNA samples from suspects and all convicted criminals could lead to a drastic reduction in the number of crimes committed by repeat offenders.

According to Lynch, many crimes which remain unsolved are committed by repeat offenders.

“This why DNA technology is so vital,” she argued. “By collecting DNA evidence from victims of rape, for example, you create criminal intelligence by linking serial rapists to victims. You will then be able to take them off the streets and we will probably find that rape statistics will go down dramatically. But at the moment, the impunity in which criminals act allows them the freedom to do what they want, and to act without consequences.”

Public awareness key

Lynch said there is still a huge amount of groundwork to be done to educate both the public, the SAPS and emergency response staff about the importance of preserving a crime scene in order for the Bill to have any meaningful impact.

“One of the greatest challenges we have in this country is that people need to understand that, in some cases, it can take a few days for officials to arrive and collect all of the evidence,” she explained. “We need to be vigilant. We need to be part of the process to ensure that crime scenes are protected in that time…If we can achieve this very basic act, it will be incredible how much evidence can be collected from a crime scene and how we can then link perpetrators to their crimes.”

In the meantime, the NGO is continuing to raise public awareness of the importance of DNA evidence.

The DNA Project holds regular free workshops and assists in training paramedics and other emergency responders on how to leave a crime scene intact for forensic investigators.

The project also recently created a public installation at the Cape Town train station which simulated the destruction of a crime scene.

A large sand box was placed in the centre of the station with stones depicting the face of a convicted felon. Early morning commuters were encouraged to walk over the scene, eventually making the face unidentifiable. The process was filmed using time-lapse videography and will serve to inform the public how disturbing a crime scene causes evidence to quickly be destroyed and prevents criminals from being identified. © The Big Issue SA