TX: Police see promise in DNA test bill
Patty
By Laylan Copelin
American-Statesman Staff (Austin TX)
Saturday, June 9, 2001
Christopher Ted Dye raped three Austin women in their homes before the police first
arrested him in 1993 for burglarizing a house on 45th Street. Unaware they had apprehended
a serial rapist, authorities released the 34-year-old former auto mechanic on bail.
Over the next six months, Dye raped four more women before being arrested a second time
for burglarizing a Barton Skyway apartment. He served two months in jail. For two more
years, as the police searched for the MoPac rapist, so nicknamed because the attacks
occurred near the expressway, Dye raped seven more women before finally being caught.
When Austin Police Chief Stan Knee began championing DNA testing at the time of a person's
arrest, he had to look no further than Dye, the city's most notorious serial rapist. "He's
the perfect example of how we could have saved 11 (rape) victims." Testing Dye upon his
first burglary arrest could have led to a DNA match from his first three rapes.
The Legislature in May responded with groundbreaking legislation on two fronts. Texas is
only the second state to allow DNA testing when sex crime suspects are indicted instead of
waiting until they are convicted. And to answer objections by civil libertarians, the
legislation makes it a felony -- as opposed to the federal standard of a misdemeanor --
for authorities to release a person's DNA improperly.
Prosecutors already can get a court order to demand a suspect's DNA to prove a case, and
the state has a DNA database collected from convicts. But Senate Bill 638 would allow
police to tie a person indicted on one charge to other unsolved crimes more quickly.
The legislation, awaiting action by the governor, is very much an Austin product. After
Knee became convinced that DNA is an underused technology in crime fighting, he sent three
officers to Great Britain, where authorities collect DNA from arrestees as routinely as
they take fingerprints. Knee and Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle then brought
British experts to Austin last year to educate the police and opponents about DNA testing.
The British use the less intrusive method of swabbing a suspect's mouth. In Texas, where
DNA is collected from prisoners, the labs use blood samples.
Knee soon learned that huge costs and the concerns of civil libertarians would be a major
hurdle. He began to scale back, accepting DNA testing at the time of indictment for sex
crimes. Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos and Rep. Ann Kitchen, both Austin Democrats, agreed to
sponsor the bill. Knee dispatched Assistant Chief Rudy Linderos to help the lawmakers at
the Capitol.
"DNA is an extraordinarily sophisticated and accurate fingerprint," said Kitchen, a former
sexual assault counselor. "By having the tests done upon indictment, these tests will be
able to be used to achieve convictions and stop the cycle of an individual repeatedly
committing rapes and other sexual offenses."
She said it also should clear innocent people faster.
The biggest hurdle now is money. Knee said federal dollars, plus state grants from fees
assessed sex offenders, are a start. The state's post-conviction databases have long
suffered backlogs due to a shortage of money and staff.
William Harrell of the American Civil Liberties Union said he is concerned about the
potential for misuse of the DNA information.
"DNA is much more than a fingerprint," he said. Harrell fears insurance companies and
health organizations someday will want the government's collection of DNA to decipher
genetic information, including a person's predisposition for disease.
Donna Stanley, the DNA lab supervisor for the Austin Police Department, said law
enforcement labs have neither the equipment nor the expertise to perform anything more
sophisticated than identification. She also said DNA profiles are just a series of numbers
kept on databases separate from a suspect's name and case number.
"It wouldn't mean anything to anyone else," she said. The physical samples are stored at
the Police Department.
Despite such assurances, Harrell said governments have a history of promising to collect
information confidentially and later misusing it. He said the federal government used
census data to find Japanese Americans to relocate during World War II, and the Texas
Department of Public Safety once sold Social Security numbers to companies before the
practice was outlawed.
"We don't like to be Chicken Little always saying, 'The sky is going to fall,' " Harrell
said. "But sometimes the sky is falling."
Harrell and Knee agree, however, that making the improper release of DNA information a
felony was a good compromise.
"The system has to be tamper-proof," Knee said. "When we are looking at evidence that it
alone can convict someone, the system has to be flawless."
seif...@yahoo.com
Sice his conviction, this man killed his cell mate and was given life. Why not the death penalty?! Why were we as survivors of this mans horrible attacks not notified about his actions?!?!
jessica hattley
Gregory Carr
> I'm shocked!!i was the first KNOW woman to be raped by this man. I told them his name was Christopher and he was an out of work mechanic. I was raped at my jacuzzi on S 1st Street in 1993.
> Sice his conviction, this man killed his cell mate and was given life. Why not the death penalty?! Why were we as survivors of >this mans horrible attacks not notified about his actions?!?!
http://www.dnasaves.org/catch-repeat-offenders-sooner-and-prevent-future-crimes/
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-txsd-2_07-cv-00266/pdf/USCOURTS-txsd-2_07-cv-00266-3.pdf Mr. Dye has been repeatedly assaulted as some of his fellow inmates hate rapists good on them.
I think rape should be a death penalty crime.