Cases Old and Cold

[HairOfTheDog]

I hope that there is a nationwide DNA library that takes the DNA of anyone convicted of a crime. Hopefully it's been started already.

There are proposals underway to make it mandatory for all crimes across all states. I hope it becomes federal law too. Right now, it's only mandatory in all 50 states to collect DNA samples for certain violent felonies.

Two other pieces of crime legislation that I really want to see get passed:

1. The right for LE to search for familial DNA matches if no perpetrator match exists in the national DNA database.

In some states that's already legal and LE has identified and arrested killers based on DNA matches to a criminal family member.

2. Mandatory rape kit testing -- there are hundreds of thousands of them sitting untested for years in police stations and evidence labs across the country. It's not only a national disgrace, it's a public safety fail.

Rapes are terrible violent crimes against women and need to be investigated thoroughly. And, as evidenced in the DeAngelo case and many others, rapists are also sometimes guilty of a variety of other crimes.

Last year, after many years of high profile exposure and pressure from activists, Congress ponied up $131 million in funding to tackle some of the backlog. Now, they need to make it a requirement that rape kits be tested in a timely manner across the country moving forward, in my opinion.