 On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com. |
Carroll: No stone unturned
What a mismatch on Sunday’s 60 Minutes: In one corner of the debate stood (or sat, as it happens) Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, arguing that prosecutors should be allowed to use every reasonable tool to catch vicious predators.
In the other corner was Stephen Mercer, a Maryland attorney specializing, we were told, “in issues involving DNA.” Mercer insisted that prosecutors be obliged to tie one arm behind their backs so government doesn’t subject “a whole new class of innocent people to genetic surveillance.”
Genetic surveillance? Sounds positively Orwellian. And notice how Mercer referred to a “new” class of people threatened with genetic surveillance, as if it were common knowledge that this sort of sinister abuse is old hat.
So what is the nefarious scheme that Morrissey has in mind? Well, when investigators obtain DNA from a crime scene and run a database check, sometimes they locate a partial match. Sometimes the match is so close that the true perpetrator must be a close blood relative of the person in the database. When this happens, Morrissey believes, law enforcement should be given the name of the individual so his family can be checked out.
But of course. The shocker here is not that Morrissey advocates following compelling clues, but that it’s actually controversial. Yet until Morrissey began to raise Cain, it was against the FBI’s policy to release such information. Fortunately, according to 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl, the FBI has relented somewhat and now leaves the decision up to the states.
Critics don’t limit themselves to lurid warnings of genetic surveillance. They also play the race card. DNA tracking within families “really amplifies existing inequalities in the criminal justice system,” Harvard’s David Lazar recently told The Denver Post, because minorities are more likely than whites to have DNA in a law-enforcement database.
Such worries would make sense if DNA were a crude legal tool, the equivalent of eyewitness testimony. But what inequality is amplified by locking up genuine criminals?
Morrissey is no jackboot prosecutor. He’s just a professional determined not to ignore evidence in plain sight.
Same old story
Tim Wirth, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and a host of other luminaries assured us a year ago that the United Nations had a crackerjack plan for replacing its morally corrupt Commission on Human Rights. Well, the new Human Rights Council wrapped up its fourth session Friday, and its record would have made the old commission proud.
Like its predecessor, the council consistently lets the worst human-rights offenders (think Sudan, for example) off the hook, while passing one eye-glazing resolution after another with little or no useful content.
“In its nine months of existence,” reports the feisty nongovernmental group UN Watch, “the council has condemned only one country in the entire world for human rights violations: Israel. At this session, the council passed yet another resolution — its ninth — against the Jewish state.”
Yes, but you can’t accuse the council of failing to rise to the occasion when its own reputation is on the line. The executive director of UN Watch managed to testify before the council, and his words were so scathing that the council’s incensed president declared he would “not tolerate any similar statements” again. Indeed, he pledged that “any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.”
It’s nice to see a council official getting exercised about something.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountain
News.com.