While DNA databases may be useful to identify criminals, I am skeptical that we will ward off the temptation to expand their use," said Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the ACLU. "In the last ten years alone, we have gone from collecting DNA only from convicted sex offenders to now including people who have been arrested but never convicted of a crime.[5]
Earl Whittley Davis was a shooting victim whose DNA profile was subsequently uploaded into CODIS even though he had done nothing wrong. This victim then became the subject of a cold case hit for a murder that occurred in 2004. Although the Maryland District Court found that crime control was a generalized interest that did not outweigh Davis' privacy when placement of his DNA profile in CODIS was not in response to a warrant or to an applicable statute, the Court held that the DNA evidence was nonetheless admissible.
The Court reasoned that placement of Davis' profile in CODIS was not reckless, flagrant or systematic, that exclusion would result in only marginal deterrence, if any, and that any deterrent effect would be greatly outweighed by the cost of suppressing "powerfully inculpatory and reliable DNA evidence." This case should lead people to fear that utilizing such practices to expand the DNA database would open a backdoor to population-wide data banking. By denying certiorari, the U.S. Supreme Court is implicitly affirming the rulings of the Second and Eleventh Circuits. This will make it more challenging for those opposing DNA database statutes on Fourth Amendment grounds.[7] (emphasis added)
Civil rights advocates have warned that demographically unbalanced forensic DNA data banks could "create a feedback loop." Because samples are stored and compared against DNA collected at future crime scenes, police will be more likely to pursue crimes committed by members of overrepresented groups, while underrepresented groups can more easily evade detection.
The potential for problems expands when states permit so-called familial DNA searches, in which police who can't find a database match to crime scene DNA can search the database for partial matches, ostensibly from the suspect's family and relatives, who can then be targeted. It's even possible to imagine situations in which some races or groups become universally covered, while others remain only partially surveyed. [10] (emphasis added)
