Capturing DNA's crime fighting potential: DNA databases are expanding and solving many cold cases, but crime labs often lack the cold cash to fulfill their potential.

• Author: Lyons, Donna
• Position: Cover Story

A bedroom window left open on a warm summer night. A little girl sexually assaulted and beaten to death. It was a "cold case" suited for a TV drama, but unfortunately it was not fiction. The recently solved 1986 murder of an 11-year-old Fort Worth, Texas, child is just one of a growing number of cold cases being investigated and solved today as a result of advances in DNA technology.

"Cold case squads" devoted to unsolved homicides now exist in most big city police departments. In Fort Worth, a single detective who investigates such cases was able to link the crime to a family acquaintance who had attended the girl's funeral. A DNA sample obtained from the convicted felon was matched to the case via a DNA database. Such "hits" are becoming routine as state and national databases hold more and more samples.

"The bigger the DNA database, the more successful," says Chris Asplen, vice president of the law firm Smith Alling Lane. As U.S. assistant attorney, he directed the Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence for attorneys general Janet Reno and John Ashcroft. "We get the most bang for the buck. We know the most valuable investment in forensics is to process DNA samples and evidence."

Virginia, in 1989, was the first state with a DNA database. By 1999, every state had one. Lawmakers have continued to add categories of offenders who must provide samples.

"Commit a burglary in most any state, and your DNA will be added to a database. Even some misdemeanors in half of the states require a DNA sample," Asplen says.

PROLIFIC PROFILES

Forty-three states now have laws to collect DNA samples from all convicted felons, swelling the numbers of genetic profiles in state databases.

In 1992, the FBI nationalized the system with CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. Now housing nearly 1.5 million samples, the system enables federal, state and local officials to exchange and compare DNA profiles electronically, scanning for matches between crime evidence and convicted offenders.

"Google it any day of the week and you'll see cold cases being solved as a result of DNA databases," says John Morgan, director of the Office of Science and Technology for the National Institute of Justice. The question before lawmakers, he says, is "how far are you willing to go with it?"

California, Louisiana, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia allow samples from people arrested but not yet convicted to be added to the state database. In the United Kingdom, every person arrested...