Creative DNA collection raises ethical questions

California v. Greenwood
She pointed to the case of California v. Greenwood, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that police did not need a warrant to search a suspected drug dealer’s trash because he should have had no expectation of privacy when he placed it on the curb. Trash, the judges wrote, is “readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.”

But Joh argued comparing DNA and trash is a poor analogy.

“Obviously, we might want to discard that cigarette, but do we really mean to give up all kinds of privacy claims in the genetic material that might lie therein?” she asked.

As advances in technology make DNA analysis faster and cheaper, “I think of it really as a kind of frontier issue,” she said.

Ruling people in, and out
Richards, meanwhile, pointed out that while abandoned DNA can confirm a suspect’s identity, it also works to the benefit of someone who is innocent.

“DNA rules people in, but it also rules people out,” he said.

That point was not lost on the husband of murder victim Barbara Lloyd, who was questioned for hours after he reported his wife’s death from 16 stab wounds in their bedroom that March 1974 morning. Police ruled Galan Lloyd out as a suspect after a few days.

Chatt’s arrest, he said, proved that was the right decision.

“If there were people out there who still thought I did it, this should do it,” Lloyd, now 59, told The Buffalo News.

DNA sampling: Handle with care
Barbara Lloyd was killed as her then-3-year-old son, Joseph, and 14-month-old daughter, Kimberly, slept. The now-grown children recently persuaded police to take another look at the killing, leading police to close in on Chatt.

“We were very fortunate that at that time there was a detective in the evidence collection unit who was able to secure evidence from the scene which was later used for comparison,” Richards said. “Here we are 30 years later, able to open up a box and submit some of the items that we found and to have a DNA analysis done.”

Joh suggests proceeding with caution.

“My hope is there will be much greater awareness of what this means, not just for these particular cases, but for everyone,” she said. “Is DNA sampling going to be ordinary and uncontroversial for the general population, in which case abandoned DNA may not be so alarming, or does it raise a whole host of privacy questions?”

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