George Soros sponsored Proposition 47, the prime mover for increased crime rates in California, as Breitbart News reported on Thursday, is responsible for a huge decrease in crucial DNA collection for law enforcement agencies.
DNA collection is mandatory under current state law for those arrested for felonies. With the passage of Proposition 47, which reduced penalties for a variety of crimes, reclassifying numerous felonies as misdemeanors, the state’s DNA samples have diminished. The basic equation is less felonies equals less DNA samples equals reduced ability to solve crimes.
Since the law was passed in November, the state can no longer analyze some 250,000 DNA samples. On top of that, according to an editorial in the Sacramento Bee, hundreds of thousands of previously collected DNA samples may have to be deleted from the state’s database due to the new law. The Bee editorial reads, “We shudder to think of the serious crimes that will go unsolved as a result.”
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, well known for her cold case prosecuting, plans on changing the law by adding misdemeanors to the DNA collection list. This would provide DNA collection for assault and battery, burglary, petty theft with a prior conviction, grand theft, receiving stolen property, identity theft and fraud crimes, forgery, drug offenses, indecent exposure, spousal abuse, annoying children, animal cruelty, and lewd conduct offenses.
In a letter to Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, who once served as captain for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, Schubert wrote that, “Many rapists, murderers and other serious and violent offenders have been linked to their crimes because of their DNA being entered into the database due to their commission of drug possession, fraud, forgery, and certain theft crime.”
Schubert clarified the need for the amendment by pointing to the specific cold case of a 57-year-old man with a twenty-five year criminal record. DNA testing for a 2005 drug bust of Donald Carter matched his genetic material in the rape, robbery, and beating death of Sophia McAllister, 80, in her home in 1989.
The solving of the Boston Strangler case in 2013, when law enforcement authorities identified Albert DeSalvo as the culprit in eleven murders, is perhaps the most famous cold case solved by DNA testing.
The Bee editorial excoriated the new law, saying that Proposition 47 reduced some felonies to misdemeanors that were actually very serious:
The initiative included some “petty” crimes that we thought were pretty serious, including possession of date-rape drugs and stolen firearms worth less than $950, which is to say most handguns. There are few reasons to have a hot Smith & Wesson or a vial of Rohypnol in your pocket other than causing mischief and mayhem.
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