Student:
Can a person be compelled to give a sample of his blood or other specimens for DNA testing?
Andy:
In the UK anybody arrested by the police for a recordable offence, so if you get a criminal record for a particular offence, has to give a DNA sample.
We have to take a sample from the inside of their mouth, so we use cheek cells, and we use those to make what we call a DNA database. So we've got two million samples on the database in the UK and we use that to match unknown crime samples against that.
Robin:
And in the US the law is different so you have to be convicted of a crime in order to be forced to have your DNA in the database, but if you're arrested as a suspect for a particular crime then you can be forced to give a sample in the same way that you can be forced to have your fingerprints taken.
Lucy:
That is the same as in New Zealand, I believe. You don't just get it when you're arrested. You have to be convicted. Okay. And 75 percent of people in New Zealand do do it voluntarily, people that have been arrested. So I guess we are gradually building up a DNA database here that would be quite useful.
Andy:
I think you've got about 40 thousand on your database at the moment.
Lucy:
Okay. We've got about 40 thousand on our database. Okay.
Andy:
You've got to bear in mind that DNA is not only used for convicting people as well. You can use it to exonerate people as well. So if your DNA doesn't match the crime scene then you're fine.
Robin:
In the US there's a project that was started by a number of lawyers and they're using DNA to look at old evidence samples for people that have been in prison for a long time and they have 138 cases where the person in prison has been exonerated and released from prison based on DNA testing that wasn't available when the person was originally convicted of the crime.
