By Margot Sanger-Katz/
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — The legislator who scuttled a bill to collect DNA from felons last year has come out in favor of a similar proposal this year, if lawmakers build in certain privacy safeguards.
Rep. Neal Kurk of Weare, testifying before the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee yesterday, said a bill to require the collection and testing of DNA from convicted felons in the state would be a sensible public safety measure if it was crafted with care to prevent unwarranted invasions into privacy and was limited to defendants found guilty of serious crimes.
“I don’t have a problem with using DNA as the new substitute for fingerprints in appropriate cases,” said Kurk, a Republican.
Last year, Kurk led the charge to kill a similar measure on the last day of the legislative session. A requirement that all felons submit their DNA to a federal database had been added into a bill updating the state’s sex offender laws at the last minute. Kurk, a longtime privacy advocate, spoke up on the House floor, and legislators voted down the entire bill.
Yesterday, Kurk recommended six changes to a pair of proposed bills. With those modifications, he said, “I think you have a winner.”
New Hampshire is one of only three states that do not enter the DNA of all felons into a federal database called CODIS, a status that could cost it a share of federal law enforcement grants. The database includes information about 13 portions of defendants’ genetic code that together are unique to that individual. When the police are investigating a crime involving DNA, they can enter DNA evidence obtained from material at a crime scene to look for a match.
Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, who supports a bill to add all New Hampshire felons to the database, said yesterday that academic studies suggest the DNA database helps solve crimes but also helps prevent them, since it allows for earlier identifications and arrests of criminals such as serial rapists.
Genetic profiles collected from felons guilty of nonviolent crimes have resulted in convictions for unsolved rapes and murders, she said.
“I think it’s very important for public safety,” Ayotte told lawmakers.
In addition to Ayotte, the Department of Corrections, the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, the New Hampshire Troopers Association, and the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence endorsed DNA collection yesterday, saying it was a reasonable measure that would help the police solve serious crimes.
But the bills discussed by the committee yesterday - one to add all felons to the database and a second to add a more limited group of sex offenders and violent criminals - had vocal opponents.
Claire Ebel, executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, told lawmakers that she had taken over as the state’s “biggest privacy nut,” saying that Kurk had apparently resigned the position. She expressed fears that participation in the database could put a permanent mark on a one-time offender and could make him vulnerable to future police harassment.
Ebel handed out a list of felonies to lawmakers and pointed out crimes like tipping over gravestones or shoplifting more than $500, which she said were not serious enough to justify putting perpetrators’ genetic coding on file.
“I just think that you need to weigh the demonstrated criminal behavior before you require someone to surrender their DNA,” she said.
Ebel, along with several other advocates, expressed strong misgivings about provisions in the bill that would allow the collection of DNA from juveniles found delinquent of serious crimes.
Mike Skibbie of the Disability Rights Center, a former defense attorney, railed against the inclusion of children in any database. Many juveniles commit crimes and go on to lead law-abiding lives, he said. Collecting their DNA, he said, would unfairly “label these people for life,” without having a significant impact on future investigations.
“If the only issue you’re concerned with is the effectiveness of crime detection, then we ought to be taking DNA from all of us,” he said.
Several lawmakers reassured advocates that they would likely amend the bill to exclude juveniles, one of Kurk’s six suggested changes. His other fixes included limiting the felonies that would trigger collection, waiting to collect DNA until a defendant’s appeals are exhausted and destroying DNA samples after they are entered into the database.
New Hampshire police officers routinely collect fingerprints from defendants when they are arrested. DNA, an even more reliable identifier, would be collected in more limited circumstances. Both bills call for collection only after defendants are found guilty of an eligible crime, and the federal database would link their genetic information to a number, not their name or criminal history.
Timothy Fifer, who runs the state police crime lab, said that the FBI chose 13 segments of human DNA that can be used to distinguish people but that are not linked to any medical or identifying information. The database only includes information about those 13 sites, he said.
All states except for New Hampshire, Idaho and Nebraska contribute material from all convicted felons to CODIS, which stands for Combined DNA Index System. Recently, many states have begun adding DNA from certain misdemeanor offenders to the database, and a few have begun collecting DNA at the time of arrest.
Rep. Steve Shurtleff of Penacook, a Democrat and chairman of the committee, sponsored the more modest DNA bill - to require the collection from felons convicted of sex crimes, crimes against children, and violent crimes including murder and rape. Those changes would bring New Hampshire into compliance with federal law and could help it secure more federal law enforcement aid. Shurtleff said he’s sensitive to privacy concerns and thought the bill would be a good first step for the state.
“Personally, I’d like to see all felons go to CODIS, but I’d like to see us walk before we run,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor