One
evening in 1988, a man broke into a house in
Canterbury. He awoke an 11-year-old girl in
her bed and raped her, threatening her with
a knife if she screamed. He then indecently
assaulted her nine-year-old sister. Earlier,
their mother had left home to work a night
shift for the first time. After the attacks,
the girls ran in tears to their mother's
workplace.
For 13
years the case remained unsolved. Then in
March 2001, John Wood, a 59-year-old man
with previous convictions for sex offences,
was arrested for shoplifting in Derby.
Detectives took his mouth swab and checked
it against the national DNA database of more
than 5,000 unsolved crimes. They found it
matched semen on sheets preserved after the
attacks on the two sisters. In June that
year Wood pleaded guilty and was sentenced
to 15 years' imprisonment. After his
conviction, the mother said: "I don't know
how we've coped as a family and how we got
through it, but we felt he would never be
caught."
This was no doubt just the kind of case Tony
Blair had in mind when he visited the
Forensic Science Service's London
headquarters this week and eulogised the DNA
Database as a crime-busting tool. He called
for the national DNA database to be expanded
to include every citizen. While at the
centre, he heard how advances in DNA
technology are not only boosting detection
rates in current cases but also helping
police in reviews of so-called cold cases -
some several decades old - where there was
no new evidence.
Paul Hackett, the DNA manager for the
Forensic Science Service, says: "I was
trying all the while to give Tony Blair the
wow factor about what we do." When Hackett
explains some of the FSS's latest DNA
profiling techniques, it is hard not to be
wowed. For a long time, DNA "fingerprinting"
needed at least 200 cells to be effective.
Now, thanks to a technique called "low copy
number" (LCN) profiling, a single cell might
be enough.
"In
the past we would have to have a visible
trace - somebody would have had to have cut
themselves and left blood at the scene, for
instance," says Hackett. "Now ... we can get
a profile from, say, an ear print against a
glass window. What's more, when there are
mixed samples of DNA we can increasingly
separate them with LCN profiling. So that
means a homeowner's sample on a vacuum
cleaner can be distinguished from that of
the burglar, for example.
"Ten years ago no one would have thought we
could get DNA profiles from a single cell,
still less from a sample that we couldn't
see. We've come a long way."
For
instance, in March the so-called Ripper
Hoaxer (aka Wearside Jack) was jailed for
eight years for perverting the course of
justice by sending three hoax letters and
making phone calls claiming to be the serial
killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper in the
late 1970s. His hoaxes put detectives on the
wrong trail and delayed the conviction of
Peter Sutcliffe by several years, during
which time he murdered three more women.
Sutcliffe was jailed in 1981, but the
identity of Wearside Jack remained a mystery
for more than a quarter of a century until
the FSS analysed a portion of one of the
envelopes using the then new technique of
LCN profiling. Tests yielded a DNA profile
that produced a single hit - a man in
Northumbria called John Humble, who
ultimately pleaded guilty to the charge.
Such is British pre-eminence in DNA
profiling techniques that FSS skills are in
demand abroad. An FSS analysis of the knife
used to kill the Swedish foreign minister
Anna Lindh in 2003 was instrumental in
securing the conviction of her murderer.
Last year, the FSS was requested by
Australian authorities to do DNA tests on
hand ties used to restrain Joanne Lees and
on swabs taken from a gear stick - these
tests helped secure the conviction of
Bradley Murdoch for the murder of Peter
Falconio.
Hackett believes it will not be long before
police officers will be equipped with
handheld devices that can transmit samples
to the DNA Database computer in Birmingham.
"They will be analogous to roadside
breathalysers," he says. "A great deal of
our work now isn't so much in the lab ...
but in developing software and other
techniques that can enable us to be quicker
and more responsive at scenes of crime." He
also hopes that, from a single cell left at
the scene of a crime, the FSS will one day
be able to build a 3D photofit of a suspect
that includes their hair and eye colours,
height, skin type, and maybe even a
personality profile.
Perhaps wowed by such scientific advances
and Hackett's crystal-ball gazing, the prime
minister on Monday dismissed the ethical
misgivings of MPs and human rights groups.
Many of these objectors worry about the many
innocent British citizens, as well as 51,000
juveniles who have been arrested and then
freed without charge, who already have DNA
profiles on the database. They fear that
expanding it will raise even graver civil
liberties issues and risk miscarriages of
justice. The Tory MP Grant Schapps
investigated the case of a teenager whose
DNA data was retained on the database even
though his arrest was a case of mistaken
identity. "The police refused to remove the
DNA profile even though they realised they
had picked up the wrong chap," he said.
It
is this kind of case that makes Shami
Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, sceptical
about Blair's dream of extending the DNA
database. "The project of turning a nation
of citizens into one of suspects may well be
the legacy sought by the prime minister,"
she says. "However, a smaller, more
manageable DNA database of those convicted
of serious sexual and violent offences would
be a speedier crime-fighting tool and cost
less to our purses and privacy." The Tories
have called for a parliamentary vote on
whether details of people who were innocent
or not charged should be included against
their wishes. But during his visit Blair
said the public backed the expansion of the
database because it was "helping us to track
down murderers [and] rapists".
The
prime minister was echoing his former home
secretary David Blunkett, who recently
pointed out that last year 20,000 people
were convicted with the help of DNA. The
crimes included 422 murders and
manslaughters, 645 rapes and 9,000 domestic
burglaries, he wrote. In a column for the
Sun last month, Blunkett claimed that the
introduction of the DNA Database in 1995
"met complete opposition from large swaths
of politicians and still faces continuing
hostility from the human rights lobby. They
say it is an 'intrusion'. Well, it certainly
is. An intrusion into the arrogant
confidence of criminals who think they can
cock a snook at society and walk free to
carry out other crimes which would otherwise
go undetected."
No
doubt what neither Blair nor Blunkett have
in mind when they champion the database is
the case of Raymond Easton. The Swindon man
was arrested in 1999 for a burglary in
Bolton on the basis that a DNA sample found
at the scene of the crime matched his own on
six points - what police called a "37
million to one chance". Easton was not a
criminal seeking to cock a snook at anybody.
He told police that he had never been to
Bolton, that he had Parkinson's disease so
advanced that he could barely dress himself,
still less commit a burglary. His DNA had
been taken after a family dispute and had
been held on the database, but after the
samples were compared more rigorously at a
further four points of identification and
failed to match, the case was thrown out of
court.
Easton is the leading British case of a DNA
mismatch, but according to Professor Allan
Jamieson, director of Edinburgh's Forensic
Institute, more such cases are possible. "I
fear innocent people will be mistakenly
identified as suspects as a consequence of
being on this database," he says. Jamieson's
worry is that some of the new supersensitive
DNA techniques, such as LCN, may make such
mistakes more likely. He is also concerned
that DNA evidence is too often regarded as
definitive in determining guilt in court.
Hackett is sympathetic to Jamieson's fears.
"There is a risk of mistakes, but the risk
isn't really with mismatching. It's about
how the background information from crime
scenes is interpreted. The other question is
how clean you keep the labs, and we do so
scrupulously to minimise the risk of
contamination." He is contemptuous of the
suggestion that the new techniques provide
greater opportunities for police abuses.
The
British national DNA database is the biggest
in the world. According to the Home Office,
the UK has 3,130,429 DNA samples on the
national database, 5.23% of the population.
The second largest is Austria's database,
which has 84,379 samples (1.04% of its
population). The US has 2,941,206 DNA
samples (0.99%). The majority of EU
countries retain fewer than 100,000 samples
on their DNA databases.
Britain's was also the world's first such
database. "It was established in 1995
because of two factors," says Hackett.
"First, there was a sea change in the
technology. We had just moved to something
called SGM profiling that allowed us to take
very small samples, such as mouth swabs. At
the same time, there was the political will
to set up a database because its potential
for helping solve crimes was becoming more
apparent."
Since 1995, Hackett and other FSS scientists
have been responsible for developing other
DNA profiling techniques. One recently
developed technique, "familial searching",
can help identify an offender when their DNA
profile is not on the database. It has been
used successfully in a number of cases, the
first of which resulted in the manslaughter
conviction of a man who had thrown a brick
through a lorry driver's cab windscreen.
Another new technique, DNA Boost, was
launched as a pilot this month in four
police forces in northern England. It
involves using computer-based analysis to
interpret DNA samples when a surface has
been touched by more than one person, or
where only small amounts or poor quality
material has been left. "This means a great
many more families can look forward to
securing justice," says Hackett.
But
as techniques have advanced, so has disquiet
about the rise in the number of people who
are profiled on the DNA Database and what
that information is used for. Over the past
five years, legislation has permitted police
to take and keep many more DNA samples. The
Criminal Justice Act 2001 permitted police
to take DNA samples from everyone charged
(previously the person had to be convicted).
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 allowed police
to take and keep the DNA of anyone arrested
for an imprisonable offence, even if they
are not charged. These changes led Helen
Wallace, the deputy director of GeneWatch
UK, to say: "Britain's DNA Database is
spiralling out of control." Genewatch has
launched a campaign called Reclaim Your DNA!
to have innocent adults and juveniles' DNA
profiles removed from the database. At
present, Wallace points out, that decision
is at the discretion of the relevant chief
constable. Liberty is representing several
people taking legal action to have their
profiles removed.
But
why bother? As Lady Helena Kennedy,
chairwoman of the human genetics commission,
asks: "Why should we be alarmed that police
or other investigators might have sight of
our private records if we are decent
law-abiding folk?" One answer, Kennedy says,
is that "being on a database of potential
offenders which might be regularly trawled
by the police means that one is on a list of
suspects and that surely very subtly alters
the way in which the state sees, and we see,
our fellow citizens". Another is that there
is a risk of such information being used by
other parties. Genewatch claims the
commercial company LGC, which analyses some
DNA samples for the police, has retained its
own "mini-database". A third is that ethnic
minorities will be disproportionately
affected if the DNA database is enlarged.
"Huge numbers of people picked up in their
youth but acquitted of any crime will remain
on the database for life," writes Kennedy in
her book Just Law.
The
number of innocent Britons whose DNA profile
remains on the database appalls Kennedy.
"This takes Britain to the top of the
illiberal league: nowhere else in the free
world is this happening," she writes.
Kennedy points out that Canada and France
have already legislated to prevent the
retention of samples from people acquitted
of crimes and also that samples from
juvenile offenders will be destroyed once
they reach adulthood so long as they commit
no more crimes during a set period. The FBI,
she claims, has "expressed jealous
amazement" at Britain's "hoarding of DNA",
underlying which "seems to be the cynical
belief that those who are suspected of a
crime are probably guilty, even if
acquitted, and likely to be involved in
further offending".
Britain, then, may not just be leading the
world in the excellence of its DNA profiling
techniques, but also in using those
techniques to curtail rights. Kennedy
writes: "[The] American public would find
such inroads into civil liberties wholly
unacceptable despite the heat of their
feelings about crime control." In Britain,
it seems, we have less compunction.