Legal News

An OC Offer: Give Us Your DNA and We?ll Drop Your Charges

By Ashby Jones

A hypothetical, LBers, to get the wheels spinnin’ this morning.

Let’s say you happen to get arrested and booked for a misdemeanor, like trespassing or petty theft. The prosecutor offers you this deal: You can either challenge the charges, presumably racking up a few thousand in legal fees — not to mention the hassle of court appearances — in the hope of clearing your name. Or you can pay $75, give a DNA sample, and walk away like nothing ever happened.

Do you do it?

This exact scenario is playing out in Orange County, Calif., (the LB’s home county). According to this recent LA Times article, The OC has “quietly” begun offering this deal to those arrested for misdemeanors: Give us your DNA and $75, and we’ll drop the charges.

“There’d be no necessity for a guilty plea, and a dismissal, or anything like that,” said the county’s district attorney, Tony Rackauckas, last week. “It’s advantageous to the defense, and it’s advantageous to us, because we’re able to handle more cases with fewer resources.”

The pros, at least from a law-enforcement perspective, are fairly obvious, as the LAT reports: The DNA sample could act as a deterrent for potential criminals and be a useful investigative tool for law enforcement.

That said, the plan has come under attack both from others in law enforcement as well as some concerned with the civil-liberties implications.

The law-enforcement objections stem from the thought that arrestees can essentially walk free. “All law enforcement will be demoralized, especially on narcotics cases,” said Wayne Quint, president of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, to the LAT. “I don’t believe any plea deals for DNA should ever occur, period,” he said. “There’s absolutely no scientific empirical evidence to show that it’s a deterrent.”

Civil liberties advocates and defense attorneys say the plan would incentivize prosecutors to pressure people who have not been convicted of any crime to give the government a DNA sample. This “troubles me because I do not think that we yet have adequate safeguards to protect privacy,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at UC Irvine.

“It’s completely voluntary, so no one has to do this,” said a district attorney spokeswoman. “There’s consequences when you commit a crime. This is actually a better option for them than other avenues of, I guess, going through the penal process.”

As of December 2008, 4,000 people had given DNA samples and signed a consent form to be in the county’s database.

Fountain Valley Police Chief Paul Sorrell also backed the plan. “In a perfect world, I think most of us would prefer that were someone accused and arrested for a crime, they proceeded through the criminal justice system in a more traditional sense,” Sorrell said. “However, these are very difficult times, and the volume of crimes has had a huge impact on the D.A.’s office and law enforcement agencies.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 24, 2009 (boomark / email).