00:00San Francisco police used DNA collected from a rape victim as evidence to arrest her for a
00:05totally unrelated crime and now she's suing the city. So how did this happen and is it even legal?
00:11Root can explain in less than 60 seconds. A woman has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of
00:16San Francisco after evidence collected for her 2016 sexual assault case was then used against
00:22her for an unrelated property crime. The DNA was kept in the San Francisco Police Department Crime
00:27Lab database and while federal law does not allow sexual assault victims DNA to be entered into
00:32CODIS, local law enforcement is not bound to the same restrictions. Once the district attorney found
00:38out how the DNA had been obtained, the felony property crime charges were dropped. The police
00:43chief also said that its crime lab had stopped using DNA obtained from sexual assault victims
00:48to solve other crimes after receiving a complaint from the DA's office. Advocates fear that these
00:53type of arrests and procedures will discourage other victims from coming forward to law enforcement
00:58to report sexual assault.
Comments