Relative's DNA Solves A 1993 Murder Cold Case (washingtonpost.com)

A 44-year-old living in Maine has just been arrested and charged with committing a murder when he was 18, the Washington Post reports: The April 1993 slaying of Sophie Sergie, an Alaska Native, was one of the state's most notorious cold cases until Friday, when authorities announced that DNA genealogical mapping helped triangulate a genetic match... Police recovered the suspect's DNA from Sergie's body. At the time, the district court filing said, DNA processing technology had not been introduced in Alaska. A DNA profile confirming the suspect as male was uploaded in 2000, but it did not match anyone in the FBI's database. The case went dormant for years...

Then the alleged "Golden State Killer" was captured [after searching commercial online genealogy databases for relatives who matched DNA found at a crime scene]. The publicity of the feat, state troopers said, sparked the idea for investigators in the Sergie case. Why not try the same? A forensic genealogist prepared a report on Dec. 18, comparing the suspect's genetic material from the crime scene to likely relatives. A woman's DNA profile emerged in the search. Investigators found their link: She was an aunt of Downs's.
Downs had been a student at the college where the murder took place. He's also been charged with sexual assault -- and with being a fugitive from justice for the last 25 years.

Comments

Is it a crime to be on the run?

[sloede]

How can the suspect be charged with "being a fugitive of justice"? As far as I understand, according to the Fifth Amendment nobody has to incriminate herself. And with a murder charge, there's no statute of limitations.

Re:Is it a crime to be on the run?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've actually been charged with a crime and got a court date but didn't show up, that's illegal. If you haven't been charged with a crime, then not showing up is definitely not illegal.

dom

Re:Is it a crime to be on the run?

[Bruce Perens]

It's because charges can be brought anonymously. A John Doe was charged with the crime, and remained fugitive for 25 years. At the end of that interval, a specific person was identified as the John Doe. In this case he did not incriminate himself, he was incriminated by genetic information.

Re:Is it a crime to be on the run?

[Aighearach]

Because legal terms have legal meaning, you don't want to listen to a legal term and just hear whatever it "sounds like," you want to refrain from understanding until after you have the definitions. ;)

When you're charged in one State, but you're arrested in another State, there are lots of details and paperwork. The jurisdiction holding you has a right to hold you, but they don't control the actual charges against you. Therefore, to prevent that being some sort of black hole that people can fall into, they have to have a process by which you're accused, locally, of having charges against you in another State. That accusation is what the "being a fugitive from Justice" is. It is not a criminal charge. There is a federal criminal charge with the same name, that applies in the situation you describe. This is something different; any extradition from Maine to another State begins with a DA in Maine filing paperwork accusing the subject of being a Fugitive from Justice.

Re:Is it a crime to be on the run?

[bugnuts]

If you're anonymously charged with the crime and refuse to appear to contest it, you're now a fugitive.

Even if you're not guilty of the crime, the fugitive charges don't disappear. Even if you're not guilty. That's what you're saying. The courts DGAF if you knew you were being charged or not. And this foreigner is rightfully questioning it.

And I question it, too. It smacks of secret tribunals, which are explicitly forbidden by the constitution. Anonymous charges in public are nearly the same as secret.

This is all fine and dandy

[Jarwulf]

Until they graduate to using your uncles first cousin's DNA to link you to a protest movement, or to determine you have a greater chance for a medical condition to raise your fees, or to decide your family has a tendency for unorthodox thinking and assign you to reeducation. But trust them. It will never come to that.

Re:This is all fine and dandy

[Bruce Perens]

or to determine you have a greater chance for a medical condition to raise your fees,

Here's information about the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

That said, I would not recommend that anyone have any of these publicly-sold DNA tests. It might be possible to take them anonymously, especially by making use of attorney-client privilege, but I will leave that to a lawyer to figure out.

Re:This is all fine and dandy

[Bruce Perens]

Moron doesn't understand the difference between a heinous murder / rape and a protest movement

Many nations are unable to make this same distinction. There are quite a few where you can be executed or jailed for what you say. If you think that the one you live in can't become like that, you're wrong.

Re:This is all fine and dandy

[Bruce Perens]

Go read about H. Edgar Hoover's operation of the FBI and his pursuit of the black power movement, etc.

Re:This is all fine and dandy

[bobbied]

Where it is the natural tendency of government to follow such paths, it is by far NOT a given they will.

The legal basis of the USA's existence, if interpreted within it's ORIGINAL intent, would make such abuses difficult to exercise. We have very strict rules of evidence for criminal trials based on the Constitution's recognition of basic rights. Rules which protect us from governmental abuses.

However, I'm not saying it's not possible such abuses could come, only that we will have to either re-define what the constitution says (using the "living breathing document canard") or amend it. Well, short of just plain ignoring it by packing the courts with judges who don't care about the law as written...

Re:This is all fine and dandy

[Tony Isaac]

DNA is not needed for a government to abuse its people in this manner.

In fact, DNA has nothing to do with the extent to which a government abuses its people. An abusive government will find ways to do what it wants to do.

The solution is not to eliminate DNA testing, but to rein in government power. This is an ongoing struggle that will never end. Freedom isn't free.

Re: I work extensively in the DNA field

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Isn't the most plausible explanation the one where the sibling is not actually a sibling?

Re:This is all fine and dandy... "moron..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"Moron; now THAT is a convincing argument!

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
ATTRIBUTION: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.—The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert H. Smyth, vol. 9, p. 293 (1906).
https://www.bartleby.com/73/953.html

The problem is not the incomprehension of the -er ..."Moron"... the problem is the authoritarian mindset which seems to value closure, order, law and justice (in about that order). A protest movement can in fact be considered "heinous" when it sufficiently inconveniences the top of the pyramid. If you don't believe me, let us step over to the Free Speech Zone and discuss it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Few want truly "heinous" crimes to go unanswered, but if the mechanisms of retribution become simultaneously too potent and too convenient ...

SPOCK: I do not believe there is much beyond Nomad's capabilities.
KIRK: And we've shown it the way home. And when it gets there
SPOCK: It will find the Earth infested with imperfect biological units.
KIRK: And it will carry out its prime directive. Sterilise.
"The Changeling"
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/37.htm

In the future...

[hcs_$reboot]

Who knows what new technology will allow authorities to uncover what you were doing years ago...

Re:I work extensively in the DNA field

[Bruce Perens]

Oh come on. Babies get switched in hospital, courts and law enforcement change people's identities for their protection (even infants sometimes), etc.

If the person isn't related to any other samples in the library, this is simply a sign of the library being incomplete.

Re:Plausible deniability?

[Calydor]

Do tell us more about this synthesized sperm you ejaculate into your rape victims or the synthesized skin you put under your murder victim's fingernails after scraping your real skin out.