MR. ASPLEN: For those who are interested, there will be a press conference today at four o'clock.

I'm a wise individual to the extent that I'm smart enough to ask the Department of Justice how they wanted to handle that, and what they asked was that -- what they suggested was that Dr. Crow, Dr. Reilly, and myself do the press conference.

For anyone else who would be interested in being here at that time to answer any individual questions that they might have, do individual interviews with them, you are more than welcome to do that, and they may be interested in having some input from the individual commissioners. Again, that's at four o'clock.

MR. GAINER: What would you represent the Commission's position is on Commissioner's Safir's recommendation or request?

MR. ASPLEN: That there is no position. What I've been saying today has been that, number one, the Attorney General has no position on this and that what she has done is she has requested of the Commission to provide an analysis of the issues and recommendations regarding those issues, that it's not a matter that she has decided to do this and wants to know how to implement it, but rather, that's the job of the Commission, is to simply lay out the analysis on them.

That's what I have been saying. That's what I'll continue to say.

What I think Dr. Crow will mention is the progress of the meeting today, how well this went, what occurred at the meeting today, and then Dr. Reilly can talk about what the particular, you know, privacy issues are as they pertain to this particular subject matter.

MR. THOMA: Chris, can I just make one comment?

With regard to where we have gone with this and where we're going to go, in the greater realm of what our responsibilities are, I would like to hope or think that we have some consensus that this doesn't automatically take a top priority when we've already mentioned several priorities that I can't see no matter how these issues -- and I appreciate the way that you want us to address them -- no matter how they're addressed, I can't see them, right now, taking precedence over the other responsibilities we have and the priorities that we've already mentioned.

So, I'd almost like, perhaps the way Phil said, to have this addressed by some experts but for us ourselves to let it be known that, right now, it doesn't have a high enough priority to be working on as opposed to the priority of backlog, the owed samples, and what we can do to accomplish that.

I really think we're going to get lost in it if we get into, okay, we have to address this right now, and that opposes what we were originally going to do.

MR. ASPLEN: I think that we can certainly proceed in parallel tracks. I don't think that the other issues that the Commission is addressing need to be put on hold by any stretch, especially given the suggestions of Dr. Reilly in terms of how to proceed.

If we proceed by nature of surveys, questionnaires, etcetera, etcetera, we can continue the rest of the process of the Commission.

Again, though, since this is a specific request from the Attorney General, it's got to be one of the top priorities. But I'll show you. We'll move in parallel fashion.

MR. THOMA: And I appreciate that, if Ms. Reno has a question of us, we will address it immediately, but what I'm saying is that our immediate response might be that it has a lower priority than some of our other objectives, in the greater realm of things.

MR. ASPLEN: We won't respond to her until August in any event other than to say we're working on the issue.

DR. REILLY: Can I ask a question about that? Jeff, do you feel -- at this moment in time, do you feel that you would be prepared to give the Attorney General an answer about this question? That's what it sounds like, that you've reached a conclusion.

MR. THOMA: No. I mean I don't have a closed mind about it, but I know how difficult it's been for us to try to reach our other priorities and objectives already, and to put this first and foremost on the next thing on our agenda, so to speak, it creates a bit of a problem in that we're only in existence through September, at least for now, and perhaps sometime beyond that, we're going to have some great difficulty reaching our other objectives if we do this first, right now. No, I'm not closed to this issue.

MR. GAINER: Isn't it pretty reasonable to assume that the Attorney General is going to be looking for some feedback when you get back to Washington? I can't believe that she's going to sit back and say get ahold of me in August.

MR. ASPLEN: We stay in pretty close touch with her staff on these issues.

So, what we'll do is we'll just continue to keep her updated. We'll forward the CODIS recommendation, for example -- I mean how are we not letting this overshadow everything else this week. We'll forward the CODIS recommendation up.

We'll probably forward up to her staff the draft proposal for the post-conviction recommendations. So, we'll be doing all that other stuff, also.

We'll let her know the progress on this issue, also, but in terms of, you know, the finalized version of that, we haven't even been requested for that until the end of August, beginning of August.

DR. FERRARA: Would it be appropriate at all, or helpful, Chris, if you provided the Attorney General, on a short-term basis, the results of just the straw-poll of the Commission on the issue?

MR. ASPLEN: I guess it might depend on how we define the issue. I think that the issue is actually several issues.

It's is it constitutional? What do we need to do from a security standpoint, a privacy standpoint, and then, if we can or if we deem it to be constitutional and doable, what will it take to get us there from a financial standpoint? That would be difficult to straw-poll on, I think, at this stage.

What straw-poll were you talking about?

DR. FERRARA: I would suspect -- maybe I'm wrong -- that most of us feel like here is an idea that might have some merit in the future but it's premature at this point, because we still are struggling with existing issues that are more critical.

MR. ASPLEN: I think putting it that way maybe puts me in a little bit more tune with what you two gentlemen were saying.

I think that what we can do is, when we do have the conversation with the Attorney General's staff, we can say we're working on that issue, but we don't want you to lose sight that there are other matters more important that we're also working on at the same time. Does that kind of help that concern?

MR. SCHECK: I'm just guessing, but if we were to do a consensus of the views around the table, after struggling with all these issues -- after all, we're a commission, we look at a lot of problems -- I think the strong feeling of people here is that whatever its merits in terms of civil liberties or other issues, we ain't ready for it yet.

MR. ASPLEN: And in essence what we're saying is, just because, right now, it happens to be a big media issue, a big issue in the press doesn't mean that it is the level of issue that should get us off-track of what are more legitimate, more pressing issues.

That sounds to me to be the kind of thing that we shouldn't even wait for a request from the Attorney General but actually send that up.

MR. SCHECK: Absolutely.

MR. THOMA: I think we have a consensus. I'm not certain, but I think we have a pretty general consensus on that.

DR. REILLY: I would be concerned about the wording. I would want to have something in front of me with a statement.

MR. SCHECK: We're not saying that Commissioner Safir's notions are necessarily wrong-headed or anything else, but compared to what we're seeing --

MR. SMITH: The Attorney General has not asked us that question. She's not asking us what we think of his proposal kind of like in New York. She's presumably asking us a question along the lines of do we want to suggest something to her about what she should do with respect to other jurisdictions' attitude towards what Commissioner Safir proposes to do in New York, and it seems to me that's the question I'm understanding us to be given, not what do we think of Commissioner Safir's proposal kind of --

MR. GAINER: Well, maybe I missed this, but is what the Attorney General asked us to do what we read in the paper? I mean that's a strange way to communicate, unless Chris, through some staff work, has had some request. I mean we're all presuming, because we read in USA Today, that the Attorney General has asked us to do whatever it is in here, and I submit, in our experience, that's probably not what has transpired. So, what is this thing, if any, that's been requested?

MR. ASPLEN: I'll tell you what it's been generated from. It's been generated specifically from her chief privacy officer, John Bentivoglio, in conversations I had with him. I think I talked about this a little bit yesterday.

The conversation was had with him; we suggested the possibility of having the Commission look into it. He then went to the Attorney General, and she signed off on the memorandum that he sent her in that regard.

Now, we are due to receive a formal letter from her requesting that.

However, it takes time for those things, and we didn't get that last week, and I asked Mr. Bentivoglio specifically last week, do you want me to bring this up in the Commission meeting, do you want me to begin to address it this way, and he said yes.

So, we will get something formally in writing. However, having it from Mr. Bentivoglio and the meeting that we had with Dr. Forman and myself and David Boyd and Jeremy Travis at one point -- that was where the idea originated.

DR. REILLY: So, we do not have a framed question in writing.

MR. ASPLEN: Not in writing, no. Not in writing, no.

DR. REILLY: Well, I certainly agree that it's not the purpose of this Commission to respond directly to a proposal coming out of the City of New York.

MR. ASPLEN: I don't anticipate that that would be the framed written question. That was never part of our discussion. It was never anticipated in any of the discussions that we had.

MR. GAINER: All of which makes your response as clear as mud.

MR. ASPLEN: Just so we're clear, to put a period at the end of that sentence, the feeling that I'm getting is that, when given the opportunity or put in the position of communicating with the Attorney General's representatives, that it is the general feeling of the Commission that, while we will, in fact, respond to her request and we will accomplish that goal, we don't want the particular visibility of that issue to draw attention away from those matters that the Commission has looked into and have deemed to be even more relevant, more pressing matters such as the database backlog, etcetera. Is that a fair representation of the way this should be presented to her staff, her representatives?

MR. CLARKE: Yes.

MR. ASPLEN: All right.

That having been said regarding that particular issue, what I would request and what Dr. Forman would request, I am sure, and what Ms. Wilson would request, as we begin to develop these questionnaires, surveys, etcetera, is that each of the commissioners develop five of their own questions that they want asked, that they feel need to be answered in order for us to accomplish the mission of this commission, and if you could, include in that recommendations for who we should address those questions to.

DR. CROW: You have in mind now the response to the Attorney General.

MR. ASPLEN: I think both. I would say both.

MR. SMITH: This has the virtue of inserting the question into a larger set, and I think that's where it belongs.

JUDGE REINSTEIN: You're not talking about large group agencies. You're talking about maybe focused people who actually do the work.

MR. ASPLEN: Maybe both. If you have individuals, you know, let me know who the individuals are.

DR. REILLY: I think it would be, in the interests of time, extremely difficult to get responses from agencies where people have to sign off.

I think we should ask people who are more or less experts, knowing it's ad hoc, informal, and limited, so we can get rapid response, and promising them, if they want a degree of anonymity. I guess there's no such thing as a degree of anonymity.

This has been very helpful in the NRC committees that I have served on, to get these experts saying you're way off on this or, you know -- and then to sort of sift through all the responses, but I just think agencies could take so long to respond.

MR. SCHECK: In terms of agencies, what Paul just gave me in terms of this 1998 national study of DNA laboratories, there's a lot of numbers here that are relevant to us, and if it was -- they finished collection on December 15, 1998.

Maybe there's some way that we can get some access to this data. This would be very useful.

MR. ASPLEN: The answer is I hope so. I would think that, given the particular circumstance we're in right now, we would be able to.

My guess is they will be a little leery, and we talked about that survey in Paul's working group meeting, and we will certainly look into that possibility of getting those numbers.

MR. SCHECK: I mean they have known cases, unknown, you know, non-suspect cases.

DR. FORMAN: The BJS survey?

MR. ASPLEN: Yes.

DR. FORMAN: They had till the end of yesterday to respond, and then the Census Bureau is expecting that they will have all the data that they do have collated by the end of spring.

MR. SCHECK: What's good about this is that it has how does your laboratory count DNA caseloads? By case, you know, in parentheses, multiple pieces of evidence and samples by sampled evidence, by sample, other, then known subject cases, unknown subject cases, received and analyzed? I mean those are reasonable numbers. That's useful.

Do they do non-subject cases? Do you do substrates? I mean, you know, take that as an issue. How many laboratories actually take substrate controls and then run them through in their DNA testing?

Now, that is, I think, a minimum quality control in doing the test, but if you require that, that means the number of samples analyzed per case goes up and the expense of it does. I mean that's the kind of minutia we're supposed to knowledgeable about.

MR. ASPLEN: Dr. Forman very wisely request that I give you two weeks' time to send me those questions, to send us those questions.

Thank you, Dr. Forman.

I encourage you to do it sooner than that, but at least in two weeks, if you could get that to us, we would appreciate it.

Let me do some other housekeeping and then we'll move on.

Under the category of mentionables, next Commission meeting is currently scheduled for May 7th and 8th, which is a Friday and a Saturday that time, place to be announced.

Working group meetings that are coming up: legal issues, March 15th in Chicago; post-conviction, March 22nd in D.C.; research and development, March 29th, Chicago; crime scene, April 9th, D.C.; lab funding, April 25th/26th, D.C.

Other things to mention: NIJ science and law conference is April 15th and 16th in San Diego; the fourth annual conference on the future of DNA, May 3rd and 4th in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Much as it may sound like a Commission function, it is not a Commission function.

We have registration forms here for anyone interested in adding yet another thing to your schedule of events.

MR. SMITH: Do you have agendas for the two?

DR. FORMAN: We do have tentative agendas.

MS. BASHINSKI: Can I make a request that the minutes of this meeting would get out to us relatively quickly? It would be helpful for us.

MR. ASPLEN: I will tell you that we have agreed to pay whatever the premium is to have these done in a week because of the recognition of that importance. What happens is we get them first, and then we kind of have to cull through and fix some things and then get them back out, but as soon as possible, we will do that.

DR. CROW: I'm a little bit vague about the five questions. Give me the five questions, and I'll turn them in to you.

MR. ASPLEN: Dr. Reilly, this was your idea.

DR. REILLY: It was my thought that, from the privacy of one's office or home or wherever, with some reflection, it might be interesting to see what kinds of issues percolate to the top of people's concerns as this Commission moves forward and that there is an advantage in having a small set of questions formulated by each individual independently of the group to see where we are, and it was not meant to be limited in any way. That was the whole point.

DR. CROW: It's the whole commission.

DR. REILLY: Yes, just to see what's bothering people.

MR. ASPLEN: And that is a great benefit to us, because by administrative function, Dr. Forman and I kind of -- we set the physical agenda of what occurs, but what we don't want to do is set the agenda for the Commission. That's not our function.

Our function is to make happen what you folks want to happen, and that's why your input in that regard is so important, but sometimes by nature of setting the physical agenda, you set the larger agenda, and we don't want to do that.

MS. BASHINSKI: Are these questions we want to ask others?

DR. REILLY: I would be as broad as possible. What are the things that most concern you as the Commission moves forward?

DR. CROW: But these are questions for the Commission to answer, not outsiders, aren't they?

MR. SMITH: They're questions we want the answers to, is what it comes down to.

DR. REILLY: My fantasy is that the staff will sift through this and they'll say, gee, seven or nine people focused on this question, maybe we should get some more data along the lines that Barry was talking about, or whatever it might be.

It seems to me a simple exercise, taking very little of our time, that might be helpful.

MR. GAHN: I have no problem doing that, and I will formulate my questions, but I'm a little confused about the Commission itself now. We spent such a long time going over those issues that we identified, and all our working groups have done such a tremendous job, and I thought it was a very aggressive program when we started out, and I wonder, are we going to be able to accomplish what we set out a year ago?

Is the Commission moving forward, or are we winding down?

DR. REILLY: Well, I would be willing to be that, whether the Commission is moving forward or winding down, that there are many questions that will be unresolved by its activities now, and to the extent we generate good ones, we're doing a service for those who come after.

The role of DNA in our society -- no one yet has an imagination broad enough to anticipate the impacts on our society. It is gigantic, and there will be commissions on DNA evidence in 2005, I guarantee you.

MR. ASPLEN: Norm, to answer your question, number one, we're actually doing both. We have an eye towards, you know, putting -- you know, finishing this up and kind of scheduling accordingly. So, in that regard, we are winding down.

The particular working groups, like the post-conviction working group, we have a few more issues to address, and then we're pretty much finished.

I think we've fundamentally identified the crime scene group, and I think that Dr. Crow is, you know, comfortable with where his group is going. So, we've identified what needs to be addressed.

To the extent that new issues come up like this process with the Attorney General's specific request, there are going to be a few things that come up between now and then that we need to address that perhaps we haven't thought of, but in line with will the questions be inconsistent with what we set out as goals originally, I don't think they will be.

What we want to do is use those questions to, I guess, better redefine what the individual working groups are doing and to put that in a context.

We're really looking to make sure we're on the right track, for one, and then are there any other issues that, when we originally set this process in motion, that we're not hitting?

We're not taking this time halfway through to change our agenda. We're not doing that. We're making sure we're on the right track with where we're going and tweaking the process a little bit, if you will.

That having been said -- Public Comment

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