A DNA database would help convict the guilty - and protect the innocent

reproduced with kind permission from http://www.walesonline.co.uk/

Jan 8 2009 By Satish Sekar

As the debate over a national DNA database continues, author Satish Sekar calls for its establishment to prevent future miscarriages of justice – but only if proper safeguards are in place

IT WILL probably never happen now, but I support a fully independent national DNA database that would contain at least the records of the DNA profiles of every citizen. However, I have always been unequivocally opposed to the records, DNA profiles and excess DNA being held or controlled by the police.

The recent judgement in the European Court of Human Rights in Marper and S v UK forbids the retention of DNA information of people who have not been convicted of any offence in Wales and England.

Despite that, I believe there should be a fully independent DNA database of every male and female of every racial origin, but only with carefully defined and effective safeguards to prevent abuse – and that must be achieved through consent, not compulsion. It is still possible to achieve this, but an informed debate must begin immediately.

DNA databasing is a very valuable tool not just in fighting crime, but also in preventing it. In addition, a comprehensive database would be a very important weapon in proving innocence.

I researched one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Welsh history – the Cardiff Five. Yusef Abdullahi, John and Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris were wrongfully accused of the horrific murder of 20-year-old Lynette White, which occurred in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, 1988.

After the longest murder trial in British history, Abdullahi, Miller and Paris were convicted. All five were completely innocent, but they could have maintained that to their dying day without silencing an unjustified whispering campaign, had it not been for the conviction of the real murderer, Jeffrey Gafoor, on July 4, 2003 – a conviction achieved with the help of the database.

He was trapped by advances in DNA testing and good fortune. In 2002 it was revealed that full DNA profiles of the same unknown male had been obtained from originally tested samples, untested but stored ones and further traces of blood recovered 14 years later from the scene of the murder.

The database was immediately checked, but there was no match. The Cardiff Five agreed to be tested again, with several safeguards to guarantee the integrity of those tests. The tests proved the Cardiff Five were innocent and an appeal was made for people to agree to tests for elimination purposes. There was no breakthrough from the appeals, but a combination of excellent detective skills and luck provided the crucial opportunity to solve a crime that had divided a once-vibrant community. The DNA profile of the real murderer included a rare allele position that in itself eliminated 99% of the people on the database.

Detective Constable Paul Williams examined the database, looking for matches at eight alleles and then twelve (SGM+ Second Generation Multiplex STR (Short Tandem Repeats) typing tested at 20 alleles, from ten genes in the DNA chain). He and applied his results geographically to the South Wales area. There were 70 matches at twelve alleles, but Out of 70 matches, one stood out. It belonged to a criminally active 14-year-old boy.

Police were closing in on the murderer – they knew he was a male relative of that boy – and in February 2003 they obtained samples from Jeffrey Gafoor. They had their man and Gafoor subsequently pleaded guilty.

It was the first miscarriage of justice in Britain to be resolved by the conviction of the truly guilty, but what if Gafoor’s nephew had never committed a crime and thus not been on the database? Gafoor was never a suspect in the original inquiry and would never have come to the attention of police, but for DC Williams’ innovative work with the database. He would have continued to live his life, having got away with murder, and causing five completely innocent men to serve a total of 16 years wrongful imprisonment before they had to live their lives in a prison without bars – a thoroughly unjustifiable whispering campaign where some still questioned their innocence and that still has an effect on them and their families. How could this be prevented from happening again?

The obvious answer is the DNA database. If every person’s DNA, or at least a record of their profiles, was on it, not only would it have been obvious that the Cardiff Five were innocent, but Gafoor would have been identified as a suspect as soon as the profiles were obtained. Whilst DNA evidence must always be corroborated, here it was in extremely significant locations, as shown by Gafoor’s guilty plea.

The National DNA Database has helped to solve thousands of cases, including serious ones such as murder and rape. It has also helped to prevent miscarriages of justice and could do so again.

If a crime like Lynette White’s murder were to occur today with such a database, not only would Gafoor be identified quickly, but the Cardiff Five would be able to prove their innocence. And this would apply to other cases to other cases too. Some historic miscarriages of justice could be resolved and innocent people vindicated, as occurred in the Lynette White case.

The families and friends of victims of crime are victims too, but so are the victims of miscarriages of justice. The Cardiff Five and their families suffered terribly, as did Lynette White’s family. If even a few lives are saved from the devastating consequences of crime, especially ones as serious as this before their lives are wrecked it is surely worth investigating whether the benefits of a complete database outweigh the disadvantages. And then there are the thousands of crimes that would not be solved without it. Before the ECHR ruled that the database could not retain information from people who had not been convicted of any offence, some crimes had been solved due to such data. Only those who have not committed crimes are innocent and their rights must be protected.

However, I do not support any system which involves DNA being kept by the police. It will never be trusted by the public. The police do not need such powers and nor should they have them for their own protection. The database must only be controlled by a fully independent body.

Ironically, the police have actually never had control of it. Previously, it was run by the Forensic Science Service, but now it is a body in its own right separate from the FSS. Police should be no more than clients, but so should defence lawyers. Police should not collect samples from individuals or supply them to the database – that should be done by staff or accredited agents of the fully independent DNA database.

The only contact that police would have with the database is ask the custodians of the database to check crime scene results against the database to identify possible lines of inquiry and any results should be disclosed to defence lawyers, who should have the right to hire forensic scientists to investigate further.

We can only guess how many other miscarriages of justice could be corrected, or better still prevented entirely, if there was a complete national DNA database – and we can only wonder how many other crimes could be solved or prevented if there was such a database.

I support a fully independent DNA database of every person, if and only if, it is genuinely independent of the police and all agencies of the state and there are fully effective and stringent safeguards to prevent abuse including some of those that I have mentioned previously. But for the good fortune of Gafoor’s nephew being on the database, an unconscionable murderer who was content to see Lynette’s family’s lives ruined along with that of five innocent men and their families too would be still be savouring ill-deserved freedom at their expense. I cannot be comfortable with that and would consent to my DNA being on a fully independent database, but only if the safeguards are effective enough to prevent abuse.

Satish Sekar is the author of Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry, which can be ordered through the Fitted-In Project at www. fittedin.com