DOCTOR CROW: Let me ask for opinions, questions, whatever it is from around the rim of the room.

Please.

SARA COMLEY: I really was going to let this go, but I cannot refrain from commenting. At the very first meeting, I raised the matter of the openness of the Working Group, of the various Working Groups. Now, I understand there is going to be a Legal Issues Working Group, I guess, a week from today.

MICHAEL SMITH: Maybe. We may have to change that date.

SARA COMLEY: Okay. But the point is if that is the first advisory committee of the Global Criminal Information Network Advisory Committee, which is a new committee, legal counsel spoke and made the distinction between two functions of a working group. If a working group was meeting, and it was deliberative, it should be open to the public, or it was supposed to be open to the public; if on the other happened, they were just -- it was a hearing, it was a working group hearing that that was not required to be open to the public. So it is hard to imagine that on this Legal Issues Working Group meeting, whenever it takes place, that it is going to be devoid of a deliberative content. I mean that is very hard to imagine at this point. Now that is my first point.

I wish you would run this by again or maybe for the first time about whether it is required for a federal advisory committee's working group that is going -- meeting which is going to have a deliberative content can that be open to the public?

PARTICIPANT: It is.

SARA COMLEY: Okay. Now, I have faxed various agendas of other advisory committee meetings that post their agendas, post the members of their meetings that are open to the public. There is some committees that are working groups. There is a task force, whatever you want to call them, and the transcripts are also put on the Internet. Now, that may be discretionary, whether the working group is deliberative, or accepting, or is merely a hearing, or it may be mandatory. My point is is that faker is for people like me, the public. It is not for the committee members. It is for me the purpose of the faker paper is so that I can have access to, that I can have input to, that I can hear the deliberations, and I can comment upon those same.

So I would ask that even if it is not required, a working group deliberative meeting is not required, it is not prohibited; and, therefore, it should be open.

Thank you.

JEFFREY THOMA: Aren't our working group meetings open? They have been, haven't they?

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: Yeah, there were initially in the Postconviction Working Groups when specifically addressed, there were a couple members who didn't want the initial meetings open to the public for this reason. They were scientists, who were discussing issues -- they were scientists who had to testify in court, and they were discussing issues from a devil's advocacy standpoint; and as such, what they didn't want is someone coming back later and saying, well, didn't you at this particular meeting say this, that and the other thing, which would have been inappropriately represented, and that was a big concern in getting their involvement initially.

There has never been -- there has never been a time where we haven't said that someone could come, and Sara, have you gotten all the materials that you have wanted in terms of what the commissioners have received and working from?

AARON KENNARD: Mr. Chair, if I may. You made illusions in a couple of your comments, Barry, in regard to law enforcement we have been woefully inadequate in our battling for or obtaining funding for the DNA. As the vice president of the National Sheriffs representing over 3,100 sheriffs throughout the country, I am going to go back and speak to this very issue and let them know of what your concerns are, and I am sure other people in the committee, to share with you our frustration, we are woefully underfunded and trying to build jails. We are up against the wall in regards to how we do the heavy duty, up front stuff. I have to go and get a $130 million bond to build a new jail; and if I have to go to my public and ask for a bond issue to build this, this very thing of DNA where the public doesn't know much about DNA, I'm open to suggestions, anything that you, if you had in mind, if you were just making an overall criticism of what is happening, or if you had something in mind that we in law enforcement should be doing.

BARRY SCHECK: This is my frustration when we had the other discussion in the morning when we were suggesting throw away the samples, and some comments were made that you -- that people weren't so sure when we were -- that we were making the suggestion for the purpose of getting more funding to do -- to make the database in a true sense operational in the U.S. I mean Paul will tell you, I went down and testified for him to get money in Virginia in front of his legislature and have done that in other places, and because it's -- you see, I have really looked -- and none of this is personal, you know, at the people here, because we all know each over, and we know that people are acting in good faith. I mean it seems to me that it is actually a national scandal. It's a national scandal that there hasn't been money put into testing old unsolved cases and new unsolved cases.

The public, in much of the remarks that Chief Hillard made, I mean there is a broad consensus that that should be done, broad consensus, and the public doesn't really understand how bad our database system is, how bad the funding is in terms of -- I am not talking about the labs being bad. I am talking about the inadequacy of resources to do what is necessary to type unsolved cases. I mean, you know, I mean a lot of it is that there is probably very few people that I have more political disagreements with than Howard Saefer and Rudy Giuliani. I spend most of my time suing them on civil rights cases, but when it came to -- when I suggested to him, why don't you -- what, you are throwing away rape kits and you are not typing them, you know, he responded -- maybe he responded too far, but you know everything being tied to the rest. The point is, you know, these remarks are made in complete good faith and after much discussion of these issues, but what I am really saying to you is that for the concerns that were raised about future technology changes to this system, and some of the other concerns that Paul raised that I think we would all agree are not as, you know, not that pressing, just as somebody that is out there in the public debating this and actually championing the use of these data banks, I really think that people are overlooking the deep seated distrust that people have, and, you know -- and I know Michael was just raising it for discussion, but then I saw it going right through Chris's mind, right? What the problem is is that somebody will write in the paper in the morning somebody said, Take it from people at birth.

When the mayor of the City of New York was asked about this issue when it arose, he hadn't been briefed on it, it is my understanding. And instinctively, he said, well, just take it from people at birth, and the next day the New York Times wrote an editorial saying let's shut it all down essentially, all right, before there hadn't even been an intelligent discussion about what the issues were. And I am telling you, you know, it is a national scandal that the resources haven't been put forward to the things that we would all agree need to be done, all right, testing, new cases, new samples, and you go a long way towards using peoples' concerns if you would do something that costs very little for law enforcement and shows that people are very concerned about the privacy issues, and that you want to deflate the debate that is raging among people who are of good faith. And it's not just the ACLU is really what I am trying to say. It's a gut feeling by the average person on the street why are they keeping that blood if they don't really need it, if they are keeping the blood. If it's only used with a fingerprint, why are they keeping that blood. And it may be that they won't believe it when you say you destroy it, but a lot of the people will. A lot of the thinking people on this issue will. So that is -- I mean I am willing to, you know, go anywhere to support this.

AARON KENNARD: I may call on you to come and speak before the National Sheriffs.

BARRY SCHECK: Well, okay, that is fair enough, but you have to support destroying the blood.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: I don't want to -- I don't think I fully answered Sara's issues.

DOCTOR CROW: Sara has the floor, since we took it away from her.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: Okay.

SARA COMLEY: Go ahead, Chris. If you are going to say what I think you are going to say, I have a response.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: Let me take a moment and think. You look lovely today, how is that?

(Laughter.)

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: We don't have any policies where people can come to the working group meetings. The individual members of the different working groups have, and I know that your working group early on said this, but they do consider them to be open to the public. We do. I know we have, at least at the last couple of meetings, discussed what the general agenda was in terms of when the next meetings were coming up. I don't know what kind of further advertisement you are looking for in terms of the public dissemination of when and where those are. I hope that in just seeing the way we have conducted this meeting by saying we are not going to wait until 3:45 when all the discussion is over to let the public weigh in on this, but rather to let them do it periodically, and you have probably been, you know, as beneficial as any to our process.

SARA COMLEY: I do my best.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: I hope that it's clear that we are not -- that we are open to as much public input as possible. Sometimes it's a logistical issue process, but we can certainly make more efforts to advertise, you know, the working group meetings more.

SARA COMLEY: I get a lot of notices of working groups and subcommittee meetings through the federal registry when they are on short notice. Then I depend upon usually the executive director to either send me a fax or put a message on my answering machine.

What you didn't say that I thought you were going to say, so you started out talking about one particular working group meeting that the reason it was -- that some members did not want it open was because there was scientists present, and they didn't want particular -- would you go through with that comment, finish that comment, and then I will respond to that comment.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: It's simply a matter of what -- there was a fear that in talking through these issues, and at times taking a devil's advocate approach, not saying something that they wouldn't necessarily believe, but throwing it out there for argument's sake, the concern was, hey, I make my living on the stand, and what I don't want is for something to come back out of context and to be faced with that on the stand, and that is very unfair, and if you force me to that position, you will not reap the benefit of my knowledge.

SARA COMLEY: Well, this is really going to be offensive.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: I can take it.

SARA COMLEY: In the first place, it is not up to the working group members whether they are scientists or nonscientists to decide whether they are going to be open to the public or not if there is a deliberative content. I can sympathize with the scientists about the testimony and the devil's advocate, but that can be handled very easily. I mean they just have to -- I mean we have had statements today where people have emphasized over and over again, I can give you the argument, but I do not want you to think that I agree with it. Barry Scheck did this. I mean a lot of people have done this, and I really feel that can be handled. It may be that the working group is not an appropriate forum for a moot court exercise.

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: Okay. I'm not sure that -- that the definition of what is deliberative process and what is not is necessarily that cut and dry. I can tell you at this stage in the game in terms of looking at the future of the commission's work, I don't anticipate that being an issue in terms of the subject matter that we are going to carry anymore.

DOCTOR CROW: Do you have a question?

No comments here.

I will count to ten. So adjourned.

Any old business, any new business?

JEFFREY THOMA: Chris, we don't have the schedule for the next full commission meeting; is that correct?

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: Not yet.

AARON KENNARD: Do you know where it will be?

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: It will be in Washington.

AARON KENNARD: D.C.?

CHRISTOPHER ASPLEN: D.C.

DOCTOR CROW: I guess my only task then --

PARTICIPANT: I thought it was Washington state out west with me.

DOCTOR CROW: Well, now that we are ready to adjourn, let me thank everybody. This has been a most at least interesting meeting, vigorous and interesting.

And I especially thank you for coming across the Atlantic to give us your wisdom.

So we are adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 2:37 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.)

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