Cold cases have to wait for DNA

Conviction needed to get sample for database

By DON PEAT AND JOE WARMINGTON, Toronto Sun

Last Updated: 11th February 2010, 8:04pm

Col. Russell Williams has to be found guilty of the crimes he’s accused of committing before investigators can run his DNA through Canada’s national database.

While many families and friends of cold cases in the four provinces where Williams was stationed were buoyed by his arrest and the possibility that he may be allegedly tied to other crimes, police stress they can’t upload his DNA to Ottawa to be compared to available DNA samples.

Only if Williams is found guilty of murder and sexual assault charges would he then have to be ordered to provide a DNA sample that could be placed in the national database.

Toronto defence lawyer and legal analyst Steven Skurka said police can get a search warrant to get the DNA for individual cases as long as they have some justification.

“I’ve certainly experienced a case where they get the DNA before as well,” Skurka said. “It’s not the case that you’d have to wait.”

But former prosecutor and victim’s advocate Scott Newark said “bottom line” there is no good reason not to treat DNA like fingerprints that are taken when someone is arrested and charged with an indictable offence.

He adds that because courts can, not must, order a sample upon conviction, the system doesn’t always work.

“Recent media suggests we’re not getting post conviction samples as we should,” he said, adding there are absurd restrictions on getting it from prisoners already in custody.

“DNA evidence helps solve unsolved crime and thereby prevents future crime,” Newark said. “As I put it once, if we had proper DNA laws there are a bunch of guys currently in jail who wouldn’t be coming out.”