In CA, a woman filed a complaint that she was sexually assaulted during a domestic abuse incident.  She cooperated with police in gathering evidence related to that case -- in 2016.

In 2021, the woman was arrested for felony theft/burglary based in part on DNA evidence that implicated her.

The problem?  While the feds have laws prohibiting law enforcement from adding DNA collected from victims of crimes into a national database.  CA, however, has no such law.  DNA from the theft were matched to her DNA in a STATE database.

The DA dropped the case after learning where the DNA sample came from.  There's also a new bill being drafted to halt state agencies from routinely adding DNA profiles from all but specific sources into the database used by LE.

My question is, why was her DNA collected at all?  As the victim and complainant, there's no logical reason I can see why investigators needed her DNA at all.

Anyway, be careful where you leave your DNA, even if you THINK it's going to help your case.  There's no telling how that DNA can be used against you many years down the road.

I'm curious now whether Hawaii has any laws protecting our DNA from being stored in a database accessible by LE agencies.

In CA, a woman filed a complaint that she was sexually assaulted during a domestic abuse incident.  She cooperated with police in gathering evidence related to that case -- in 2016.

In 2021, the woman was arrested for felony theft/burglary based in part on DNA evidence that implicated her.

The problem?  While the feds have laws prohibiting law enforcement from adding DNA collected from victims of crimes into a national database.  CA, however, has no such law.  DNA from the theft were matched to her DNA in a STATE database.

The DA dropped the case after learning where the DNA sample came from.  There's also a new bill being drafted to halt state agencies from routinely adding DNA profiles from all but specific sources into the database used by LE.

My question is, why was her DNA collected at all?  As the victim and complainant, there's no logical reason I can see why investigators needed her DNA at all.

Anyway, be careful where you leave your DNA, even if you THINK it's going to help your case.  There's no telling how that DNA can be used against you many years down the road.

I'm curious now whether Hawaii has any laws protecting our DNA from being stored in a database accessible by LE agencies.

Just speculating here but if they did a rape kit to collect DNA evidence it would likely contain her DNA as well as the alleged suspect's DNA. They might need to take a sample of her DNA so they can differentiate between the suspect DNA in the sample and her DNA.

I wonder if her DNA was just hit on by the computer or if they suspected her and knew her DNA was on file and then compared it.

As for Hawaii laws, that is a good question, I have not heard anything on the Hawaii end.