New Ohio Law Requires Police to Store DNA Evidence

The state of Ohio just passed a law that requires law enforce­ment to retain bio­log­i­cal evidence:

Police depart­ments, sheriff’s offices and crime labs through­out the state will be required to retain all bio­log­i­cal evi­dence col­lected from crime scenes of spec­i­fied crimes for up to 30 years — in some cases longer — begin­ning Tuesday, July 6.

Proponents of the new law main­tain it will guard against a wrongly con­victed per­son remain­ing in prison when new evi­dence is uncovered.

Opponents claim the new law appears unwieldy and is another unfunded state man­date on already stressed city and county budgets.

Sometime later this month or next, a task force will work out the details.

“It’s the posi­tions of the crime labs that law enforce­ment will be respon­si­ble to secure and main­tain the mate­r­ial that may con­tain bio­log­i­cal evi­dence,” said Ken Betz, direc­tor of the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab. “One of the defi­cien­cies (of the law) is that it does not pro­vide the resources.”

Mark Godsey, direc­tor of the Ohio Innocence Project, which pushed for the new law, said it will save law enforce­ment money by giv­ing them the state’s first guide­lines on evi­dence retention.

“A lot agen­cies save every­thing until their prop­erty room is full. Then they throw out the old­est. Now they have spe­cific guide­lines for a lim­ited num­ber of crimes,” he said.

Those crimes are aggra­vated mur­der, mur­der, vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter, first– or second-degree invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter or vehic­u­lar manslaugh­ter, rape, attempted rape, sex­ual bat­tery or under­age gross sex­ual imposition.

Betz coun­tered with­out spe­cific details agen­cies “won’t get rid of any­thing because you don’t know what you might need. … We’re reach­ing out into the wind.”

Article orig­i­nally posted in The Dayton Daily News.

Granted, they might be able to throw out some evi­dence sooner. But cer­tainly there are going to be huge costs asso­ci­ated with the long term stor­age of bio­log­i­cal evi­dence. The ratio­nal men­tioned is to free wrong­fully con­victed peo­ple, when new evi­dence is uncov­ered. The unmen­tioned part of that, is that in order for the newly uncov­ered evi­dence to “free” some­one, it has to be ana­lyzed int he crime lab. The act of col­lect­ing it won’t set any­one free.

There are going to be HUGE costs asso­ci­ated with the manda­tory analy­sis of all col­lected bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in the state of Ohio. Lets wish them the best in find­ing a fund­ing source for this new mandate.