Category Archives: DNA Legislation

Gardaí will be able to share forensic evidence such as DNA profiles and fingerprints with authorities in other countries for the first time today.
Laws passed in 2015 are finally coming in to effect, meaning offenders arrested here could end up being linked to crimes outside of Ireland.

RICHMOND, Va. (WHSV) — The DNA data bank in Richmond is adding two additional misdemeanors requiring DNA collection because of a new law passed in the Virginia General Assembly — which was inspired by the deaths of Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham.

June 19, news broke that DC had indicted a DNA profile the month before. Authorities couldn’t ID their suspect by name, but they had to act because the clock was ticking: If they waited much longer, they wouldn’t be able to prosecute sexual assaults committed by a serial hotel rapist in 2003.

Standing underneath a projection of their daughter’s high school senior portrait, Hannah Graham’s parents watched Gov. Ralph Northam sign legislation they hope will help prevent violent crimes similar to the one that took their daughter.
More than three years after the University of Virginia second year was abducted and murdered, state legislators this year passed two bills that mandate DNA analysis for people convicted of misdemeanor criminal trespassing or assault and battery.

Police in the German state of Bavaria will have new powers to use forensic DNA profiling after a controversial law passed today in the Landtag, the state parliament in Munich. The law is the first in Germany that allows authorities to use DNA to help determine the physical characteristics, such as eye color, of an unknown culprit.
The new DNA rules are part of a broader law which has drawn criticism of the wide surveillance powers it gives the state’s police to investigate people they deem an “imminent danger,” people who haven’t necessarily committed any crimes but might be planning to do so.

On May 25, the state Senate Appropriations Committee will decide if two bills that would demand the speedy testing of California’s large backlog of rape kits and the timely testing of all newly-collected rape kits will move forward.
AB3118 requires the first-ever statewide inventory of untested rape kits in California. At present, state officials have no idea how many kits are sitting on shelves across the state.

CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) -It’s a healing environment for sexual assault victims. A place where survivors can tell their story when no one else will listen.
Jennifer Schlosser is with the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center and is glad that legislation is being proposed to remove the statute of limitations on sexual assault cases in Ohio.

Several years ago, the Supreme Court considered the case of Alonzo Jay King Jr. Arrested in an assault in Maryland, he ended up being charged and convicted in an unsolved rape case after a sample of his DNA, which police collected while booking him, returned a match in a statewide database. King, who had been sentenced to life in prison, argued that the Maryland law allowing the warrantless, suspicionless collection of his DNA violated the Fourth Amendment.