A file photo depicts a form from a sexual assault evidence kit, sometimes known as a rape kit.
San Francisco — On Monday, a rape victim whose DNA from her sexual assault case was used to arrest her in an unrelated property crime filed a lawsuit against the city. Upon searching the database of a San Francisco Police Department crime lab, the woman’s DNA was linked to a late 2021 burglary. In February, then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin revealed that her DNA had been captured and stored in the system as part of a 2016 domestic violence and sexual assault prosecution, a surprising disclosure that sparked privacy concerns.
Adante Pointer, the woman’s attorney, said in a statement, “This is government overreach of the highest order, exploiting the most unique and personal thing we have — our genetic code — without our knowledge to try to link us to crime.”
The disclosure provoked a national outrage from advocates, law enforcement, legal experts, and legislators. Advocates stated that the practice could discourage victims from cooperating with law police.
The inclusion of victims’ DNA in the national Combined DNA Index System is already prohibited by federal law. In California, there is no statute prohibiting local law enforcement databases from preserving victims’ records and searching them for wholly unrelated purposes years later.
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Legislators in California passed a bill last month that prohibits the use of DNA profiles gathered from sexual assault survivors and other victims for any reason other than identifying the culprit. Under the proposal now before Gov. Gavin Newsom, local law enforcement agencies would be forbidden from retaining and subsequently searching victim DNA to incriminate them in unrelated crimes.
The report was discovered among hundreds of pages of evidence against a lady recently charged with a felony property offence, according to Boudin. After discovering the origin of the DNA evidence, Boudin withdrew the woman’s felony property crime charges.
Police Chief Bill Scott stated that the crime lab discontinued the practice quickly after receiving a complaint from the district attorney’s office and formally revised its operating policy to prevent the misuse of DNA collected from victims of sexual assault.
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Scott stated at a March meeting of the police commission that he had uncovered 17 crime victim profiles, 11 of which were from rape kits, that were linked as prospective suspects utilizing a database of crime victims during unrelated investigations. Scott stated that he believes the woman who filed the lawsuit on Monday was the only person arrested.
The lady filed the case using the pseudonym Jane Doe to safeguard her privacy, according to Pointer. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who claim to have been sexually assaulted unless they specifically request to be identified.
Local law enforcement crime labs are permitted in California to maintain their own forensic databases independent from federal and state databases. The law also permits municipal labs to conduct forensic analysis, including DNA profiling, and to utilize these databases without state or other oversight.