European Court of Human Rights Limits DNA Retention
Last week, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France ruled that European Union countries cannot indefinitely store DNA evidence of those who have not been convicted of a crime. The ruling came in a case brought to the Court by two British nationals who wanted their DNA evidence removed from the British government's DNA database. In one case, the person was acquitted of a crime of which he was accused when he was eleven, and the other involved a domestic dispute which was later resolved amicably.
The Court ruled that keeping the DNA evidence violated Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Court noted, "England, Wales and Northern Ireland appeared to be the only jurisdictions within the Council of Europe to allow the indefinite retention of fingerprint and DNA material of any person of any age suspected of any recordable offence."
As I blogged about last year, the attitude in the UK has been to put everyone's DNA in a database. In fact, a senior UK judge, Lord Justice Sedley, in the name of fairness, called for everyone in the UK including visitors to have their DNA captured in a database.
In addition, "The Court was struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the power of retention in England and Wales. In particular, the data in question could be retained irrespective of the nature or gravity of the offence with which the individual was originally suspected or of the age of the suspected offender; the retention was not time-limited; and there existed only limited possibilities for an acquitted individual to have the data removed from the nationwide database or to have the materials destroyed."
The UK government has until March to decide what do with its National DNA Database which currently contains information on 850,000 people - including at least 40,000 children - who don't have criminal records.
Earlier this year, the US federal authorities started adding information from those arrested as well as those convicted to the FBI DNA database. Thirteen states also keep this type of information, and regularly turn it over to the FBI to be placed on its database.
The US government (and most states) will purge the information from the database when if conviction is reversed, the case is dropped or the person acquitted. However, an individual must specifically petition for deletion of their information from the FBI database before it will be removed.
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