After 25 years, the Los Angeles Police Department recently arrested alleged serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr., — a.k.a. “The Grim Sleeper” — by partly using DNA evidence other than his own. “The Grim Sleeper” case is the first time that an active familial DNA search has been used to solve a murder in America.
How did they catch this alleged sexually predator and murderer of nine black women (and murderer of one man)? Using a familial DNA search, the crime lab compared the DNA left at the crime scenes with DNA samples in California’s database of 1.3 million felons to search for near matches indicating possible relatives. The familial DNA search turned up 200 partial matches. Researchers then compared the Y chromosome (which is passed from father to son) found at the crime scene to the 200 partial matches. Only one result turned up: Franklin Jr.’s son, who had been convicted of a felony weapons charge. The police subsequently surveilled Franklin Jr. and directly connected him to the serial killings using DNA evidence left at a restaurant.
People exonerated of crimes due to DNA testing (who are disproportionately black) thanks to groups like The Innocence Project have gotten the lion’s share of attention. However, the familial DNA tool — already used in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand — as having the potential to increase the chance that crime victims (also disproportionately black) get justice has gotten little notice. Right now, only California and Colorado use the technique.
Nevertheless, familial DNA testing is an increasingly controversial technique. Critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union argue that familial DNA searches violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures”, as well as its “probable cause” clause. For instance, should a possibly innocent relative be regularly “genetically surveilled” because their kinfolk has been in trouble with the law?
Opponents also express concern over potential racial profiling. Blacks have a significantly higher incarceration rate than other groups, and thus would disproportionately be affected by “genetic surveillance”. False positives are also a concern, with partial matches that belong to unrelated individuals.
While these are potential drawbacks, the benefits outweigh them. More ethical concern needs to be placed on crime victims getting justice. Familial DNA should be one of several tools that police use in catching murders and rapists, especially when an exact DNA match does not exist in a state’s felon database. Given the 52 percent recidivism rate among U.S. prisoners within three years of their release, it is not unreasonable to search their DNA samples for kinship patterns. Couple that with the fact that almost half of America’s prisoners have at least one close relative who has also been incarcerated, which demonstrates a family-criminality correlation.
Cold cases could get new life (as they have in Britain) using this technique. Fredrick Bieber, a Harvard medical professor who specializes in familial DNA searches, asserts that such searches could solve up to 40 percent more crimes in which DNA evidence is present. It would thus be a threat to public safety to not explore the familial DNA option as a crime-fighting tool, especially when more subjective tools like eyewitness identification and fingerprinting are used.
Given the hundreds of people who have been exonerated thanks to DNA testing, familial DNA search could be beneficial in that arena. It could actually complement the good work of groups like the Innocence Project, by significantly lowering the number of people wrongfully accused in the first place. Familial DNA searches could help reduce the number of black crime victims by putting more perpetrators behind bars, and solve cold cases affecting our communities.