MARK M ALDRIDGE Independent - POLICE ABUSE THE LAW, DNA?
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The Police,
The Law and The DNA…..I think I must be getting old, it doesn’t feel that long ago that DNA
evidence was first being introduced into our legal system and legislative
framework. There were grave concerns about how the police may use and abuse
this new technology and power. The people were up in arms about the
taking of their DNA. The people did demanded to know that this DNA was being
stored on some secret Government database or was taken when not required by law
to be taken.The
government promised that they wouldn't and that if found 'not guilty' the DNA
would be destroyed. The people found out this was a lie under the Rann
government when a man was convicted upon DNA evidence which was ‘promised’ to
have been destroyed from a previous not guilty verdict. Enactments were quickly
made to quash the appeal by retrospectively changing legislation…and from that
point on, the initial safeguards that we were promised were slowly eroded…now
little is left of these safeguards. Thankfully,
there are some safeguards still in place to protect the civil liberties of our
citizens. But who is protecting them, certainly not the boys in blue….I mean
black…I mean a kind of really dark blue…you know…the ones sworn to uphold and
obey the law.This
isn’t a new debate, the police have been abusing their powers for as long as
they have had them, but for the purposes of this article I’ll try limit their
abuse and contempt of the law to the issue of taking DNA samples. The majority
of the people out there would believe (or be lead to believe) that when mistakes
were made it’s just been mistakes, by the minority of police. This couldn’t be
further from the truth. A notable
doctrine of our criminal law system is that of innocent until proven guilty and
it is from this doctrine that the Criminal Law (Forensics Procedures) Act 2007
(SA) draws its distinction between Suspects and Offenders.As
a suspect, the legislature provided certain safeguards to protect the innocent.
One such safeguard was that forensic procedures had to be approved by a senior
police officer (a police officer of or above the rank of inspector). Another
important safeguard was that the procedure had to be relevant to the
investigation and could produce some evidence of value. Can the
police take a sample of DNA for any offence? NO!