Jarrod Willis is going to prison for the rest of his life for a brutal 2009 rape that he was never a suspect in. Just a decade ago, this wouldn’t be possible.
But now, after a ferocious legal battle that privacy rights advocates and the ACLU thankfully lost, it is.
Willis’ DNA was added to the national DNA database after a recent drug arrest. Turns out, he was also the guy who committed a vicious 2009 rape and kidnapping that Charlotte-Mecklenburg police never even had a suspect for.
Originally, the state and federal DNA databases were only supposed to collect DNA from violent felons after they were convicted of violent crimes. But states quickly shifted to passing laws that allowed the collection of DNA from those merely arrested on violent felony charges.
Then, in recent years, states also began changing their DNA collection laws to include samples from lower and lower level felonies that weren’t violent. And they began inputting it before conviction, and in some cases whether the criminal was convicted or not.
And now, in just the last few years, you are beginning to see stories like Willis’ where violent criminals rape and murder, but then go on to commit lower level crimes like burglary, robbery and drug dealing that land their DNA in the database. They are subsequently caught because of it, something that never would have happened before.
Just over the border in South Carolina, Bruce Hill will spend the rest of his life in prison for a horrific 2005 home-invasion/double slaying of a locally beloved elderly couple. He was never a suspect in that crime either, until he committed a robbery in Tennessee in 2006. His DNA was collected after that and uploaded to the national system and the hit reported to Horry County authorities.
The next battle? Inputting the DNA of people who committ misdemeanors. It’s New York, of all places, that has been a leader in this. New York is the first state to input DNA in many misdemeanor cases. South Carolina leaves the decision up to judges whether to input misdemeanor DNA.
But as you can see from this chart, states still have a long way to go because many categories of felony crime DNA are still excluded. In February, North Carolina will implement one of the toughest DNA inputting laws in the country. Police will be allowed to collect DNA samples from criminals merely arrest –not convicted — for certain serious felonies and misdemeanors, rather than just convicted felons only.
Meanwhile, in 2010, the state got a record 420 hits.
Fast forward to 2020, when criminals are forced to operate in a new reality that is unfathomable right now, one in which any crime past or future could rat them out for all their other crimes. In this future system, criminals, acutely aware of the new scientific reality, will have a level of prior restraint placed upon them that thus far has been unknown to humanity.
The knowledge that their DNA was collected and entered into a database after a non-violent crime they committed at age 17 could literally alter the course of a criminal’s entire career. And in the UK, an even more advanced model called “familial DNA” is being implemented. Serial rapist James Lloyd’s DNA was never entered into the national UK DNA database, but his sister’s was after she was caught drunk driving. He was caught in 2006 after the system matched her DNA with that collected at the crime scene as a familial match.
There are readers of this blog who would no doubt object to this on privacy, but it is just science. Privacy rights advocates have challenged the idea of using DNA at from its inception in criminal cases, a practice that is now widely accepted by the public. This too will be one day, and is another 1.2 million DNA samples are added to the database each year, it will save thousands of lives.
