Newborn Screening: Police Links Baby’s DNA to Father’s Criminal Case Through Forensic Genealogy

A public records lawsuit filed a month ago in New Jersey suggests that DNA samples are being used as well by police in criminal investigations.

As a WIRED report specified, if one is born in the United States within the last five decades, chances are good that one of the first things he did as a baby was to provide the government with his DNA sample.

By the 1970s, states had established newborn screening programs in which a nurse takes a few drops of blood from a pinprick in a baby's heel, then sends the sample to a laboratory to test for specific illnesses. Through the years, the list has developed from a few conditions to dozens.

The blood is supposed to be used for medical procedures. Such screenings with babies with severe health conditions have been highly successful in terms of reducing death and disability in children.

Blood Sample for Police Surveillance

The lawsuit, as mentioned earlier, filed by the Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor of the state, a nonprofit news organization, alleges that state police sought a blood sample of a newborn from the New Jersey Department of Health for the investigation of the father of a child in connection with a sexual assault committed in the 1990s.

According to a technology fellow Crystal Grant from the American Civil Liberties Union, the case represents an entire new leap forward in the misuse of DNA by law enforcement.

She also said that essentially every baby born in the US could be included in police surveillance.

It remains unknown how many nationwide agencies have sought to use newborn screening samples to investigate crimes and how frequently such attempts were successful. However, there is at least one other incidence of it occurring.

In December 2020, it was reported by a local TV station that California police had issued five search warrants to access such samples and that at least one cold case there was solved with the help of the blood of a newborn.

DNA Reveals Crime Involvement Through Forensic Genealogy

The NJ lawsuit alleges that police obtained the blood sample of a newborn baby, now of elementary school age, to carry out a DNA analysis that associated the baby's father with a crime.

This was conducted using a technique known as investigative genetic genealogy, or forensic genealogy. It typically involves isolating DNA left at a crime scene and employing it to create a digital genetic profile of a subject.

Researchers can upload this profile to genealogy websites where other people have liberally shared their DNA information, hoping to connect with family members or discover more about their ancestry.

Since DNA is shared within families, investigators can use relative matches the mapping out the family tree of a suspect and narrow their identity down, a related report from The Verge specified.

Genetic Information

A similar LNN report said that according to the NJ Lawsuit, police had reopened an investigation into a cold case and had employed genetics to pace suspect within one family, one of many adults and their children.

However, police did not yet have probable cause to attain search warrants for DNA swabs from any of them. Rather, they asked the newborn screening lab of the state for a blood sample of one of the children.

Analysis of this genetic information showed a close link between the DNA of the baby and the DNA collected at the crime scene, specifying that the baby's father was the person the authorities were looking for.

That was sufficient to establish probable cause in the assault investigation, so police sought a warrant for cheek swabs from the father. Following analysis of his DNA, the suit claims, police discovered that it matched the crime scene DNA.

A report about the baby's DNA that led to the father's investigation is shown on NS Spotlight News's YouTube video below:

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