State Police may hunt for a suspect using kin's DNA - The Boston Globe: "The State Police crime laboratory is considering expanding the use of its DNA database to search for close relatives of suspects whose DNA is recovered from crime scenes, a controversial crime-fighting technique that prosecutors say would help them solve more cases but that critics say would target innocent people, many of them members of minority groups.

Currently, the lab takes DNA found at crime scenes and compares it with DNA samples from convicted felons in hope of finding a perfect match and a suspect. The lab does not permit employees to seek or report close matches, which could give investigators an important lead by indicating the suspect may be related to a felon in the database, according to officials at the state's Executive Office of Public Safety.

But Mary Kate McGilvray, the new acting director of the lab, recently told the annual meeting of state prosecutors that the lab was reconsidering the ban. The possible change, which reflects an emerging national trend, is part of a private $267,000 review prompted by the suspension in January of the civilian database administrator, Robert E. Pino, partly for allegedly violating a ban on so-called familial searches. He was fired Friday.

McGilvray and other public safety officials declined to say why there were considering lifting the ban on familial searches or how the reassessment related to the Jan. 11 suspension of Pino.

McGilvray also met last month with district attorneys to discuss the possibility of allowing familial DNA searching, according to Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, who welcomed the development.

'I think it has the capability of solving serious crimes and getting seriously dangerous individuals off the street and that it would be perhaps unconscionable not to go down this road,' Conley said. 'Science advances, and it's simply responsible on our part to follow any investigative leads.'

But defense lawyers and civil libertarians condemn the idea, saying investigations resulting from partial DNA matches would inevitably cast suspicion on some law-abiding citizens.

'Familial DNA searches would invade the privacy of innocent people, those who just happen to be related to someone convicted of a felony, as well as the privacy of unrelated people whose genetic profiles happen to resemble that of someone in the database,' said Anne C. Goldbach, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and head of forensic services for the state public defender agency.

Critics also fear that such a change would have a particular impact on minorities because a disproportionate share of genetic profiles in the databases comes from members of minority groups."

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Last July, the FBI relaxed its ban on law enforcement agencies sharing partial matches with investigators in other states, letting states decide whether to cooperate.

The FBI oversees the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which stores more than 3 million DNA samples collected from convicted criminals nationwide and, in some cases, those who have been arrested but not convicted.

(Read Original Article - Via The Boston Globe.)