By Taylor Romine, CNN
(CNN) — DNA evidence has become a cornerstone of modern police work, be it through the use of genetic genealogy or submitting material found before modern advances in testing.
One tool, known as a John Doe DNA warrant, has made news after a former police chief serving sentences for murder and rape escaped from an Arkansas prison Sunday.
This type of warrant uses DNA recovered from a scene to help identify a suspect not known by name, keeping open cases that might have already hit a statute of limitations, according to the National Institute of Justice, the research branch of the US Department of Justice.
56-year-old Grant Hardin, who escaped from prison Sunday, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the death of James Appleton in February 2017, according to court documents. When his DNA was entered into the Arkansas DNA database, it triggered a 14-year-old warrant issued in connection to the 1997 rape of a schoolteacher in Rogers, showing him to be a match to the semen sample taken from the scene.
He was charged with the woman’s rape, and later pleaded guilty to two rape charges associated with the case.
Hardin’s case is just one example of how these warrants have been used over the last 25 years. While some think this specialized warrant is a new opportunity for justice, legal experts argue that DNA is not infallible — and this practice has the potential to violate the rights of suspects.
Here is how John Doe DNA warrants have been used over the last 25 years.
How these warrants came about
In 2000, a Wisconsin prosecutor issued a John Doe DNA arrest warrant on a 1994 sexual assault case, just days before the statute of limitations was about to run out, according to a retelling from the National Institute of Justice.
The warrant was based on the perpetrator’s DNA profile obtained from evidence, the National Institute of Justice said. While it was a new concept, the prosecutor argued the DNA profile could be accepted by the court as an identification of the person who was to be arrested.
About three months later, the system identified the DNA profile as Bobby Dabney, a Wisconsin inmate who was ultimately convicted for the sexual assault at trial, the National Institute of Justice said. A 2003 Wisconsin Court of Appeals decision upheld the use of a John Doe DNA warrant, saying the case didn’t violate the statute of limitations, and his due process rights weren’t violated.
An earlier case took decades to pan out. In March 2000, California authorities issued a John Doe DNA warrant associated with three sexual assault cases in northern California from the 1990s. Since the perpetrator’s DNA was not already in state systems, it made it harder to identify, but they were able to narrow down their suspects through genetic genealogy, which blends DNA analysis in the lab with genealogical research.
Authorities arrested Mark Jeffery Manteuffel in relation to the case across the country in Georgia in 2019. He pleaded guilty to two charges of forcible rape and one count of sodomy in 2020, the Associated Press reported.
DNA used to identify a suspect in 20-year-old rape case
In 1997, Amy Harrison, a teacher, went to her school on a Sunday as she prepared for the week ahead. A church service was being held in the nearby cafeteria, so she was aware of others being in the building, a probable cause affidavit in the case said.
After being at the school for a bit, she went to the bathroom in the teacher’s lounge. But when she came out, she was attacked and raped by a man pointing a gun at her, the document said.
While the assault was underway, she wiped a liquid substance off her leg and onto her sweatshirt, which authorities were able to get a DNA profile from, the affidavit says.
While investigators spent the next six years trying to find the perpetrator, they had no luck, former Rogers Police Chief Hayes Minor said in an Investigation Discovery documentary on the case. (Investigation Discovery, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.)
“The laws of the state were very different then. And there’s something called a statute of limitations, and basically what that means is that after a certain length of time, that case can no longer be prosecuted,” he said, adding that the day the assault happened was when “the clock starts ticking for us.”
After those six years, they wouldn’t be able to prosecute the perpetrator even if they found him, Minor said — so they decided to try using a DNA profile on the warrant, as it had been recently used by a Wisconsin prosecutor to keep their case open.
“I typed it up, prosecuting attorney’s office approved it, and we go to the judge and he signed it, which gave us then an active arrest warrant. We just had to figure out who it was that had that DNA,” Minor said in the documentary.
It took 14 years before the DNA profile was connected to Hardin.
Some express doubt over use of DNA warrants
While prosecutors continue to use John Doe DNA warrants, some law and professional organizations argue against them.
In 2004, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Board of Directors adopted a resolution against the warrants, saying “those charged in such a manner could be seriously hampered in their ability to mount an effective defense.”
They argue that many factors could play into the reliability of DNA samples, including degradation over time, errors in collection and issues in storage.
“DNA is but one tool of many that should be utilized in determining whether an individual is responsible for a particular crime,” the resolution says. CNN has reached out to the organization to inquire if they still hold this position two decades later.
The use of John Doe DNA indictments “subverts defendants’ rights by working around legislatively created statutes of limitations,” writes Emily Clarke in her 2019 journal article in the American Criminal Law Review. She argues instead for removing the statute of limitations in rape cases altogether.
Not abiding by the statute of limitations could also undermine a fundamental tenet of the criminal justice system, Clarke wrote.
“In a society where defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, courts of law should not be relying on the presumption that whoever left DNA at the scene of a crime is guilty,” the article says.
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