DOUBLE HELIX

California DNA Collection Challenged

From arrestees.

In what may be an important case for the use of DNA evidence, the American Civil Liberties Union will mount a challenge in San Francisco on Wednesday to California’s practice of collecting DNA samples from arrestees. Currently every person arrested on felony charges can be forced by police to supply a DNA sample, even before they are convicted, a practice that has brought the state’s DNA database to about 2 million samples. That number is only growing as law-enforcement officers in California are collecting in excess of 11,000 samples from suspects every month, a practice that the ACLU will argue infringes on citizens’ civil rights.