MR. ASPLEN: Let me ask for the next panel to start to come on up at this point. That's a panel on some of the legislative issues. I know that we're getting to the end of the conference here and I know it gets a little bit harder as we go along. People get tired and such, but we're also into some of I think the more important part of the process. The big point that has been made by so many people is the need to talk to our legislators about the funding issues and to be advocates in that regard.

David Boyd is going to be the moderator of this particular panel. Let me tell you a little bit about David. Dr. Boyd is the director of the Office of Science and Technology for the National Institute of Justice. His bio is included in your materials. I think what is most important to know and to understand is David's commitment to these kinds of issues. It's the job of the Office of Science and Technology to look at technology issues and to find ways to get it into the hands of our front line police officers.

The commitment of OST to the Commission goes far beyond the creation of a commission and the opportunity to get together at meetings and to discuss these great things because, quite frankly, if that's all you do, you don't have a whole a lot of effect from that, but rather his commitment has been the further commitment to do things like print a million copies of something.

When I came to David and I suggested the idea of printing a million copies of that pamphlet, I expected that I would get some sort of convulsing response or something. I didn't. I think I might have gotten a raised eyebrow, but it was very clear that David believed that the issue was that important, that the idea of getting this information into every law enforcement officer's hand was that important, and so David committed the money to it. David committed the money for the CD ROM.

So I want you to understand that as we go into this process, that it takes that kind of commitment to make things just like this conference go, but for the further effect that the Commission's work is going to have.

With that, thank you, David.

DR. BOYD: I never like to bite somebody that has given me such a nice introduction, but asmuch as I love Chris, the fact is that he is an attorney. As you can imagine, being in the justice department we're surrounded by attorneys and, of course, my office is not a legal office. We're primarily scientists, we're researchers of various types, engineers, technicians, and so, as you can imagine, we have a different view of the world typically than lawyers do.

I'm noted in the department for telling an occasional joke or two about lawyers, so much so that people have suggested to me that I ought to quit telling these made up jokes and that I really ought to be fair and talk about lawyers as they really are. So I've decided to turn over a new leaf and tell stories that come directly from real courthouse testimony.

It seems there was a forensic pathologist who was on the stand testifying about a homicide, and the defense attorney looked at him and he said, "Doctor, I understand that you say that Mr. Davis was dead when you first saw him."

The doctor looked at him said, "Well, yes. I am the forensic pathologist. I perform the autopsy.

"But did you know he was dead when he arrived there?"

He said, "Well, the death certificate said he was dead."

He said, "Well, did you take his pulse?"

The doctor said, "No. I'm the forensic pathologist. I perform the autopsy.

"Did you check his respiration?

"I was the forensic pathologist. I performed the autopsy.

So you didn't take his pulse and you didn't check his respiration. How can you be certain he was really dead?"

At that point the doctor looked at him kind of quizzically and said, "Well, his brain was in a jar on my desk."

So the lawyer, obviously one of those lawyers who is trying desperately to keep things moving while he thinks of the next question proceeds to ask: "Well, is it possible that he could still have been alive?"

At which point the doctor leaned back and said, "Well, I suppose it is that he could have been out practicing law somewhere."

The way the Commission came about literally came from a discussion in the back seat of a taxicab as we were going somewhere, and we proposed the notion that it might be useful to help attract the kind of public attention to build support for this that was required, and so we came up with the notion that we would suggest to the Attorney General that we should create a nationalcommission.

This is not an easy task. National commissions require certain slots. There are all kinds of legal requirements for the conduct of meetings under a commission, and so we expected this to be a long, drawn-out process as we tried to make the argument for one, only one of the slots that was available for a commission.

To our surprise the Attorney General signed it off immediately, and we so initiated the Commission that you've heard so much about so far. You might ask why is it that we're focusing so much on state and local law enforcement, and I know you have heard a variety of reasons why. I think the most compelling reason is because the reality is that crime and law enforcement are primarily in this country local affairs. 95% of all law enforcement personnel are in state and local agencies. That represents some 19,000 agencies with virtually all of the crimes the public really cares about on an immediate basis is local jurisdiction, not federal. The Federal Government is seldom involved in rapes, robberies, murders, muggings, for that matter, even barroom brawls and domestic disturbances, but the local police routinely are the people that have to handle these things, and for most of these crimes it is the local police who will conduct all of the investigation and all of the evidence collection. In a few cases there may be some federal involvement from one of the federal agencies, but even then you will have conducted the initial investigation and you will have probably collected all of the evidence at the scene and you're the critical cog. You and your officers are the critical cog of this whole operation.

It's for that reason that we find it so important that we work directly with you both at the state and local levels both to improve your capabilities to try to get funding and the rest. As you've heard several times, we can't lobby. As a federal agency, it would be inappropriate for us to do so, and we would never suggest that. It is true, however, that you as private citizens can talk to anybody you darn well please about anything you want, and I want you to understand that while we would never lobby, we certainly don't believe we have any authority to get into your way.

There is legislation pending, and it's legislation that I think is important and that you should be very interested in, and so we're going to turn to Tim Schellberg to tell us about some of that pending legislation. Tim is going to talk about the national picture of legislation for forensic DNA at the state and local levels. He's a partner in governmental affairs at the law firm of Smith Alling Lane. His firm has offices in Takoma, Washington, and Washington, D.C.

What I find most interesting is in his biography is that this is somebody who has actually been involved in working as an advocate for police for some time because in 1991 he signed on as both a lobbyist and legal advisor for what strikes me as an interestingly unusual organization. They actually have the sheriffs and the police together in the same organization, which ought to provide remarkable clout.

So he has been focusing on those kinds of issues for them. He also has an interest in this area because he also represents a number of private organizations including PE Biosystems, which is a DNA equipment manufacturer based in Foster City, California.

So I'm very pleased to give you Tim Schellberg and a discussion on the legislative issues.

MR. SCHELLBERG (Mr. Schellberg's PowerPoint Presentation): While the AV people get my Power Point presentation hooked up I would like to say that the Department of Justice has cordially invited me to speak, and I think this is the fourth or fifth time I've given a version of this talk, and every time Dr. Boyd has told a lawyer's joke and I've sat quietly and I've actually ignored Dr. Boyd because I didn't want him to find out that I was also a lobbyist because I feared I would be the subject of one of his next jokes.

Anyway, I appreciate coming here. What I am going to do is basically cover the federal and state legislative scene during the year 2000. Most of my experience is based in the database expansion issue, and I'm going to talk mostly about that and cover the trends, some of the politics, and also get into a little bit towards the end just to give you an update on post-conviction legislation going on throughout the country and the DNA statute of limitations issue where there has been a number of bills introduced.

As Dr. Boyd said, we represent PE Biosystems, and what we do for them is basically we track all the legislation going around throughout the country and we initially provide as a resource to all the legislators such as Senator Bronson that is going to speak and the legislative staff what is going on with this debate throughout the country.

Before I get into the year 2000 I think it's very important to look at where we stood as of 1999. In 1999 we had various crimes statutes on the books, but I think it's important also to look at the evolution of the DNA statutes. In the early 1990s, of course, all the states implemented the sex offender databases. We moved towards all violent crimes. A lot of states are moving toward burglary. A number of states, six as of 1999, had all felons. Some states even creeped down into some misdemeanors. One state has the law on the books to do arrestees, although it's not implemented, that being Louisiana, and perhaps the final evolution is what we just heard about, perhaps doing some sweeps.

Looking at the maps of all states sex offenders, here are the states as of the end of 1999 that collected for which crimes. 28 states collect DNA for sex offenses, murder, and all violent offenses, and that's the darker shade there. The lighter shade, ten states require for sex offenses and just murder, and the white shade, of course, are the states that only collect for sex offenses. You will see when I talk about what happened in 2000 most of those white states are now dark as many of those states passed laws this year. Here are the states that collected for burglary, 17 at the end of '99. Here are the states that collected for all felons. In the year 2000 we broke a record on how many expansion bills were introduced. There were 20 introduced, although only eight passed and ten did not pass, and there are a couple still pending as their legislatures are still in action.

Looking at the bills that passed, Arizona added all violent offenses and burglary, Colorado all violent felons and burglary, Florida was just an all violent offense state until Senator Bronson's bill passed, which added burglary. Georgia, which was the most significant bill of the session, was just a sex offender only state, and they have now become all violent convictions or all felony convictions. One of the unique things, clauses that they added to their bill is they were worried alittle bit about the money, so they said it has to be somebody that is convicted of a felony that resides in a state penitentiary. If you're convicted of a felony and doing your time in a local jail, you would be tested. New Jersey was a sex offense only state. They are now all violent felonies. South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia were all sex offense only states, and now they have become all violent offenses, burglary, and a couple of them had a few others such as larceny and counterfeiting of all things.

Looking at the bills that did not pass, some of the more significant ones there, California had an all felony conviction, the State of New York had an all felony conviction and misdemeanors, North Carolina and Connecticut tried the all arrest situation, and both of those bills failed. Looking at the pending bills, Pennsylvania moves from an all sex offense to all violent felonies, and Rhode Island is trying to get all violent offenses and burglary.

Later on in the presentation we are going to cover why all of these bills failed and what are the main reasons, but in summary the main reasons are with the exception of Connecticut and New York there was pretty much zero advocacy from law enforcement, prosecutors, victims' groups in those states where these bills failed, and that is the primary reason why they failed. In addition there is a number of states that had significant privacy concerns, and both the advocacy issues and the privacy issues I'm going to cover in a little bit.

I think it's important to go back to this slide because this is the one where I think we all need to get to is to get all the violent offenses people in the database, and if you look at the white shaded, Arizona passed a bill. Now they're a darker shade, as did Colorado, South Dakota, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia, New Jersey, which basically leaves us the only big populated states left that are not collecting from all violence is Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, I guess Connecticut, and Kentucky are all 3 million plus states.

So it looks like we're starting to round out the country in collecting all violence. In Michigan we might see some action. Is anybody here left from Michigan today? You should know that there is a bill sponsored by I believe it's Senator Shirley Johnson that is going to Senator VanRorgenmeiter's committee, the chairman of the judiciary committee, and he has said that he's interested in perhaps expanding to all felons. So you have a very unique opportunity. That bill will be in the committee I believe September 15, and you will have an opportunity to test out your advocacy skills that you've learned here to perhaps have an influence on that bill.

I think it's also important to understand what we're doing in Congress. Historically over the last couple of years Congress' action in the DNA area is basically to give some modest appropriations to handle the state's backlog, and in 1999 Congress gave $15 million to the NIJ, who is in the process of giving that money out to do the convicted offender backlogs; however, the year 2000 Congress significantly increased their activity basically in two areas. One is they're giving quite a bit of money or trying to give a whole bunch of money to the states for both the convicted offender backlog and for the case work, and we'll talk about the amounts in a moment. In addition they're finally getting around to creating the databases in which they control which do not exist today, which are the D.C., U.S. military, and federal criminals database.

The two bills that are in play right now are sponsored by Senator Oren Hatch from the Senate Judiciary Committee and Congressman Bill McCollum from Florida who chairs the crimes subcommittee. Looking at Senator Hatch's bill, which to date I don't think is formally introduced -- when I checked yesterday, it wasn't -- but looking at the details of his bill, he gives $50 million over two years for the database expansion for convicted felons and also 70 million for case work. In addition he looks at the three databases and says they're going to be all felons, which differs from McCollum, and we will talk about that in a second. In Hatch's bill, he combines the post-conviction issue. In addition to that he says that if you want to be eligible for the grants, you have to have post-conviction procedures in place in your state.

McCollum's bill beats out Hatch's in the amount of money. The latest draft that passed the committee last week gives 45 million for database convicted offenders and $125 million for case work over a three- to four-year period. On the databases he's a little more careful, and on the D.C. database the newest draft says that it's going to be determined by the D.C. council. They will decide which crimes to add. On the military and federal database he stops short of all felons obviously. He says it will be most of the violent offenses and burglary.

What is odd about that is he left out robbery, and they did it intentionally. I think to their credit what they're trying to do is they're trying to bring bipartisan support to this bill. They don't want to rock the boat. This is the bipartisan agreement, although I think they are missing an opportunity. If the legislators are buying off on burglary, I think if they convey what this does, I think most of them will not have a problem with adding robbery.

I think it's important to understand who is who in this Congressional DNA debate since it is so significant. Congressional legislations differ from most states in that even though the authorizing legislation may say that they're going to spend $175 million for DNA and it will be plastered right into the legislation, it doesn't mean anything unless the appropriators put it in the budget. On the authorizing side, of course, it's Senator Hatch and Senator Leahy, who is father of the post-conviction issue and will definitely play a big role on the expansion issue because of his post-conviction issue.

On the appropriator side while the chair is Ted Stephens, the person that really controls the money is Senator Judd Gregg from New Hampshire, and it will be his decision if future year budgets contain that $175 million. On the House side while Henry Hyde is chair of the committee, he has bowed out from actually sponsoring the expansion bill and Bill McCollum is the one that's taking charge. The three other Congressmen, Gilman, Weiner, and Kennedy, were the original drafters of the expansion legislation, which was merged in McCollum's bill about a month ago, and McCollum's office is working with all three Congressmen to perfect the language.

On the appropriator side the chair is Bill Young, but, as in the Senate, Hal Rogers controls the justice budget there, and he will be the vital decision maker in the House of whether that money is in there. Is anybody here from Kentucky left today? I know that law enforcement will have a big influence on him. I hear he's a friend of law enforcement, and if those folks can talk to him about DNA, that will be helpful.

What is the outlook for these two bills during the 2000 session? Well, I think that it looks good except we are running up to a time crunch. They've only got a few days left before they recess, and when they come back in September, they will probably only be here four to six weeks, and the McCollum bill hasn't even passed out of the House yet.

So we're looking for a very tight time frame, but there are some other factors that I think might place this bill in jeopardy perhaps, although I think we're looking good at the moment. The post-conviction issue may have a chilling effect because at the moment everybody seems to agree to the expansion issue. It's a bipartisan effort. Everybody is on board, but on the most post-conviction issue, it carries some baggage in that everybody seems to support it, but they support it at different levels and have different ideas of how it would work. If the McCollum bill, for example, gets over to the Senate and the Senate insists on putting the post-conviction language onto the McCollum bill, if they have not worked out their differences by the time that happens, it could put the expansion bill in jeopardy.

Another thing that might get in the way is the arguments between all felons and something less. If Hatch decides to pursue the all felons language, perhaps that might rock the bipartisan agreements. Even if these bills pass, the big question then is well, we talked about perhaps $60 million starting in this year's budget going for DNA and then 60 more million over the next couple or three years. I believe perhaps we might be out of luck for the year 2001. Senator Gregg and Congressman Rogers have fairly much worked out what their budget is going to look like, so the big money for DNA might not start showing up until the year 2002, although in the 2001 budget that's being worked on there is I believe $30 million being earmarked for DNA databasing and crime lab expansion, and the statements in both the House and the Senate is that the database backlog shall be the priority for that $30 million.

Looking at Congress and the state legislators, it's clear there have been primary arguments that have evolved in these legislative debates, and there are three easy ones. They solve more crime, they prevent more crime, and they exonerate the innocent. You hear that in every legislative body which you work in. Solving more crime is basically self-explanatory. The bigger those databases are, the more statistical likelihood you'll have of getting hits against the database from crime scene evidence. With the recent statistics out of Florida and Virginia shows that if you go from an all violent felons database state to an all felony state you pretty much will double your chances of getting hits on the database for violent crimes and therefore solving more crimes.

Preventing more crimes, we've heard throughout the two days here how this works. For example, you have a rape victim that's actually the perpetrator's fourth rape in let's say six months. They finally get their suspect. That individual had a rap sheet for burglary and other nonviolent crimes, and it was in a state which did not take for nonviolent crimes, which meant that if that state did take for nonviolent crimes, perhaps the second, third, and fourth rape would have been convicted, and that's how this stuff prevents crime.

Exonerating the innocent, we all know and we have heard stories of how DNA in general exonerates the innocent. You have a suspect. You have a DNA sample. You take the DNA sample, you compare it against the suspect, and if it's not a match, you've exonerated that personfrom being guilty. The question we need to ask is how can the bigger database exonerate the innocent, and that's the questions that these legislators will be asking you.

One of the arguments that we've heard is the scenario of having the guilty party in the database. An example I suppose is if you come upon a murder scene let's say in a garage and it's a wife of a gentleman that has been murdered in a garage, there is no DNA evidence around the body that conclusively you can say belongs to the perpetrator, but there are a few things. There is a cigarette butt. Perhaps there are many cigarette butts in a family that smokes, and so all eyes turn to the husband because the husband has a rap sheet for domestic violence. The relatives say they have been quarreling more than ever, so the police are focusing now on that individual because of circumstantial evidence.

Let's say they do run the cigarette butt against the database and they get nothing because the person that that cigarette butt belongs to has a conviction, but it's in a state that doesn't take for nonviolent offenses, but if that state took for all felons, that person's DNA would have been in the database, they would have gotten a hit, they would have been focused on the real perpetrator; therefore exonerating the spouse. Those are examples of how a bigger database will exonerate the innocent.

Looking again at the state legislation and all of the Congressional activity, we start to see a lot of trends. One is that it's clearly more populated states are moving towards all felonies. We've seen big bills out of Texas last year, New York State, Florida, and the list goes on and on. We're seeing these states that didn't have a big database moving in that direction. Burglaries clearly are the baby steps that the states are comfortable with. Senator Bronson is going to mention that in his presentation I'm sure because that's where they can get agreement on.

State funding, I don't have to tell you that your state legislators have failed miserably over the last ten years in supporting DNA funding for the databases; however, things are changing rapidly in this area. California had a record-breaking allocation this year. Just two weeks ago they passed a $55 million budget to pay for backlogs and case work, New York, $11 million to pay for their new legislation and the backlog, and Florida $2.1 million just to pay for Senator Bronson's legislation.

I always point this out when I talk about how perfectly the State of Florida did things. Many times the state legislators will want to introduce one of these bills. They move independently because they think it's a good idea, and they pass the bill, and there is no money to pay for the increase, but in Florida's case what they did was the agency, FDLE, they went to the governor's office, they argued their case of why they wanted to add burglaries, got permission to add the $2.1 million for the burglaries in the budget. Jeb Bush's budget moved along. They contacted Senator Bronson's office. He introduced the bill. The senator's bill moved in tandem with the budget. Both passed at the same time, and the day that law came into effect they started processing the burglary samples and putting them in the database. That is a perfect way to work the budget with the legislation, and hopefully that will be the poster child for future legislators.

Other trends, of course, is that Congress is having significant funding increases, and anothertrend is merging of the post-conviction. This can be a good thing or this can be a bad thing. On the good side I think it's good because when the case in Georgia did this, they had that all felons bill, and apparently the ACLU and the defense bar had some problems with it, but loved the post-conviction bill. So when the legislature put the two together, the ACLU really didn't mind the expansion issue that bad. They liked the post-conviction more, so they jumped on board and they had law enforcement with the ACLU and the defense bar all supporting the same bill; however, as we were seeing in the U.S. Senate, that might not be the situation there where you have disagreements over post-conviction, and that might actually be a hindrance to the expansion bills. So it might just kind of depend on the politics of your individual state.
Why are the expansion bills, many of them have passed, but even more of them have failed, and why is that the case? Well, the reason for that is basically two reasons. One is that there are significant privacy issues at stake with database expansion that have gotten in the way; and, secondly, there is a lack of coordinated, organized advocacy throughout the United States on this issue. We'll cover both in detail.

The first slide I'm putting up here is a quote from George Orwell in his book in 1994, and, as you know, George wrote about big brother, he wrote about black helicopters, he wrote about the thought police, and many of you have probably read the book.

What is going on with this issue as it is now determining how many state legislatures feel about law enforcement senior surveillance and intelligence issues. Your request for these activities are no longer in vogue with many state legislatures. They see you as a threat to individual privacy, and there are many reasons why legislatures have the privacy paranoia which they do, but the idea of law enforcement with black helicopters is truly having an impact on how legislators feel.

George Orwell is not alive now, but if he was, this is probably how he would view the debate taking place in Congress right now, and state legislators, many of them, especially from the far right and the far left, view law enforcement's request for expanding databases as a big brother activity, and we need to recognize that and we need to deal with it head on.

There are many bills that fail that were directly impacted by the privacy debate. California, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington State, they all failed because of this privacy issue. So I think it's important to look at some of the questions that we can deal with. One is what is the impact of other nonforensic DNA legislation going to be on the database expansion.

In 1999 there was about 150 pieces of legislation dealing with DNA. This year there is about 300 across the country. Most of those have nothing to do with forensic DNA. They dealt with insurance companies not getting DNA to rate individuals. They dealt with employers not having DNA to discriminate, hospitals staying away from DNA. So in the minds of many legislators, they're very fearful of the power of DNA and how can it intrude upon our lives, and it's having a negative effect on their feelings towards forensic DNA, and we have to recognize that fact.

The next question is will the power of advancing DNA technologies have a negative effect on lawmakers? You heard yesterday about new technologies that might be coming down the pike such as a hand-held device. When legislators start hearing that law enforcement can travel aroundwithout even probable cause; they've got a hunch about some guy that just discarded a cigarette butt. They can take that cigarette butt, run it against the database, and get some hits, while we all think that's a great activity, there are serious privacy ramifications, and we need to recognize that might upset some of our policymakers.

I think one of the big questions here is can privacy concerns be addressed in legislation. I think they can be. I think that if we go to the legislative bodies and put in requests for expansion and you volunteer to accept amendments that say that the database shall be kept secure, it shall not be distributed to anybody, there will be criminal penalties involved if they do, we all know that the crime labs already keep this data secure, but by putting that language in the bill and assuring the state lawmakers that these privacy issues will be protected, perhaps we can move DNA databasing to the same level of security or thought as the fingerprinting technology.

Right now we take fingerprints from everybody arrested, but the reason why the state lawmakers don't see DNA the same way as fingerprinting is because there is so much more information at stake, as we have heard, but if we can make this data secure, if we can take the privacy element out of it, perhaps we can get towards fingerprints.

The second issue that is why all these bills have failed is there is definitely a lack of coordinated advocacy. We all know that many of the state labs, Virginia, Florida, many others have gone to great lengths to advocate for expanding these databases. I know that many of you in this room, perhaps many of you, your sheriffs and chiefs back home have advocated it, but the general rule is that you really haven't done it across the country, and what is lacking is a group to come together to bring all the arguments together, to advocate what the success of DNA databases is, and that's what needed.

As a corporate lobbyist I don't carry the same clout as law enforcement advocates would. As a federal agency, the folks from NIJ, your hands are tied. You all probably want to get out there and tell folks how good it is, but you really can't because of the strict lobbying rules. What you really need is nonprofit interests out there telling state lawmakers how great this is and how much they need it.

The national associations that are out there, ICP, NSA, the victims groups, while they truly support this issue; they've passed resolutions in support of it, it has not elevated to their top level because basically they have had other issues that they have been working on for perhaps five and ten years that are at the top of their list, so if you want to get this to the top of their list, they're going to have to hear it from the folks back in the districts.

What is the outlook for future DNA expansion in the state legislatures? When I first started giving this talk back in January and February, I had only been involved with this issue for less than a year, and I was very fearful that the mushrooming and privacy paranoia that's going on in our country was basically going to overcome the ability to expand our databases.

While I still believe that privacy issues are going to expand and we're going to have to deal with those issues, what I didn't anticipate, which I've noticed in the last couple of months, is the truepower of DNA databasing. We track all the articles dealing with this issue, and we see all the hits that are taking place on a daily basis around the country, and with the proper advocacy and the promotion of these hits and what this does and how it solves crime and prevents crime I think it's going to overcome the privacy issues that many state legislators have. For example, you've got perhaps $175 million coming from Congress. You've got big appropriations coming from state legislatures.

Just imagine how many hits you're going to start getting in two to three years. You're going to be moving up towards what Great Britain has, which means that let's say that somebody's daughter or somebody's wife has been raped or murdered and they find out that their state legislature did not pass the laws to do all felons and if they did, that rape or murder wouldn't have happened, that argument is going to shift to that legislative body, and I think that there will be enough power there to overcome some of these privacy issues. But right now we're still in this midst of proving ourselves, and it will be some time, but I do think that you're going to start to see every state moving towards all felons. All arrestees is a different issue. I think it has got potential, but it's going to be a more difficult sell.

Real quick on the post-conviction issue, recent events have brought this issue to the nation's forefront. The National Commission has done an outstanding job, the Innocence project, Governor Rhymes' moratorium, Senator Leahy's issue, and extensive media coverage, and because of that you've seen 17 states introduce bills in the last six months to put in place this legislation. The statute of limitations issue and to expand statute of limitations when DNA is at the crime scene, ten states have introduced bills this year to expand the statute, so we're going to start seeing more of this.

Another database issue to keep your eye on is the missing persons database. The FBI is in the process of putting this together, and a number of states are going to start introducing these bills to operate the missing persons database. California's bill, if you can get a hold of it, is a pretty good model. It's sponsored by Senator Spears of California. It's headed for passage. The FBI has been involved working on the language. It's fairly perfected, and so if your state is going to consider that issue, I would recommend taking a look at that bill.

All the information that we have, we conduct weekly searches of all the state legislation, all the government publications dealing with forensic DNA, all the publications in general dealing with forensic DNA, and we put them into a nice three or four page summary and we send it to our clients at PE Biosystems on a weekly basis. A few months ago they agreed to make these reports, these summaries available to the general public free of charge. If you see that web site -- it's also in your booklet -- you can access the web site, register for it, and you can get the three or four page summaries, and it should keep you up to date on many of the things taking place throughout the country.

In addition we have about 500 individuals around the country that want us to e-mail them when the reports are posted and give them a one paragraph explanation to what is contained in the summaries. So if you would like to be on that e-mail distribution and be notified when these reports come out by this one paragraph summary, either e-mail me or if you want to give meyour business card after our panel is through, feel free, and we'll put you on the list.

We're saving questions until the senator is done speaking, and I'll look forward to answering some.

DR. BOYD: Our next speaker will talk to you about that model example in Florida. Senator Charles Bronson was elected to the floor of the Senate to serve the 18th district back in 1994, and he is now in his second term. He's the chairman of the natural resources committee and the vice-chairman of the health, aging, and long-term care committees. He also serves -- and I'm not sure where he gets time to do all of this -- but he also serves on the criminal justice budget subcommittee on public safety and judiciary, the joint legislative committee on legislative oversight, and on the board of directors for the astronauts memorial foundation, on the Florida space roundtable, the agriculture and international trade committee, and the agricultural and rural development committee of the southern legislative conference.

He's obviously a very well-regarded legislator in his state. He received Lockheed Martin's award for legislative excellence in 1999, and from our perspective more importantly was recognized by the Florida sheriffs' legislative award in '95, '96, '98, and '99, and he has been recognized as legislator of the year by the Florida Economic Development Commission and as one of the top 40 legislators by the Florida Chamber of Commerce for the last three years in a row. So we would like very much to hear about the Florida example. Senator Bronson.

MR. BRONSON: The one thing that wasn't on there because this was sent out ahead of time and I want to thank him since he's here at this meeting, but Chief Keith Chandler from Melbourne that you heard a question from this morning was the head of the police chiefs' association of Florida, and they recognized me also basically for my work some of the bills that we put through the legislative process in Florida, and I wanted to thank him for that. He was the head of that association.

We within the legislative process -- let me give you a little bit of background. I'm tired of hearing all the stuff. I didn't realize I was doing all that, but I guess I am. I go to enough meetings, but I'm actually in the cattle business in Florida, and I'm on a number of different committees with these various committees that I'm on in the legislature, but when it comes to crime and those types of issues, which I have been the vice-chairman of criminal justice in the Florida Senate. I have been on the criminal justice committee for the six years that I've served in the Florida Senate. My background goes further back. I went through the police academy in Dade County in 1978 and volunteered up to 20 to 30 hours a week as a reserve officer with full certification as a police officer since that time until I was elected in Florida. You cannot have dual office holdings, so I had to quit riding with the agricultural crimes crime division unit in Brevard County to hold my office as a state senator because we have a dual office holding.

We run into some real wild exchanges of information, and DNA testing, while most in the legislature want to help law enforcement do their job and we definitely want to take violent recurring offenders off the streets to protect our citizens, I want to protect my family and friends and neighbors and I'm sure you do, too, and you're working hard to do that, we run into some realdonnybrooks when it comes down to talking in committee about some of this legislation. We have at least three attorneys that sit on our criminal justice committee. Myself and one other has law enforcement background experience, and the rest are members of the Senate that want to serve on the criminal justice committee.

Well, when you start talking about issues, one of the things that has created the most stir is when you want to put in the legislation something that is going to take place starting this year, but you want to retroactively go back and put people who are in prison under crimes they committed under a set of laws with different rules and regulations at the time they were committed, which we know are going to go to the supreme court of the state and be challenged. There are a lot of issues that we have to fight through before we can ever get to the legislation that we know is good legislation. We just have to try to pull it off.

In our case in Florida with the Senate bill that I passed, 838, where burglary was added, it wasn't that big a fight, and I'll tell you why. There were two or three major reasons. Number one, the sheriffs association in the state and all the sheriffs had gotten together and they were for this legislation. The police chiefs of the State of Florida, and believe me being the fourth largest state, we have quite a few police chiefs in the state, they were all behind it. State's attorneys' groups from around the state were all behind this. We had some public defenders that weren't overly behind it, but some felt there was some justification to do this. We did have at least enough push by the defense attorneys to ask some major questions about do we want to do this?

Of course, that's their business. I mean a lot of these defense attorneys used to be -- a lot of them started out their careers with the prosecutor's office. They learned that quite well and went on into their own private business and now they're defense attorneys. Of course, anybody that went through the academy knows one of their favorite questions is have you stopped beating your wife today? And you can't answer that. If you do, you either admit you still beat her or you used to beat her, and, of course, you haven't, but those are the types of things that they use in court.

Well, it became very well known that with DNA becoming more and more the standard for did this person do it or not, were they at the scene or not, it became very evident they were going to have a tough time going to court and trying to beat up on some young prosecutor who is trying to get out there and make a name for themselves, be it male or female, and win cases not because the person was really innocent, but because they were able to out dual them in court.

So this is going to make the job of defense attorneys pretty tough because this is the type of evidence that I think a lot of people were looking for to say I always thought that person was there or involved in this crime.

But it makes it tough on us as legislators to go sell this, and I have had cases where I passed bills in the Senate that the House didn't pick up because they didn't have enough people convinced in the House to pick the bill up and pass it. This one passed both houses, and we happened to have a governor who was on board, as Tim mentioned, from the beginning not only from the advent of making sure we were able to convict these people who were probably repeat offenders to protect the people in the State of Florida, but he was willing to go ahead and put the money up front tohelp our FDLE, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, increase their database process, and I think I saw on this list that I've got that with the new piece of equipment they're going to purchase -- it took them two and a half days to process and analyze 86 samples. With this new piece of equipment they're going to be able to do 344 samples every eight hours or ten hours I guess it is.

So we're going to begin to see some connection between some cases. We knew that going in, but how quick we get this done in the legislative process depends on how much negative and positive input we get. You heard me say the police chiefs were behind it and the sheriffs were behind it and the state's attorneys. The ACLU I can guarantee was not behind some of this because they began to see the potential use, the idea they're going to use it for this and they're going to come back and ask for this and they're going to use it for nonviolent crimes. So they're priming the pipe nationwide to try to stop the addition of other crimes and so forth because of potential use for things that have no portent to crime.

The newspapers in our area in the state, by the way, have even indicated one of the things we certainly wouldn't want to see is this DNA information being given to private insurance companies that could deny insurance to people because they have a gene that says that you're 80% possibility through genetic interface of having this particular type of cancer or you have a liver disease problem within your genetic background or those types of things.

The other issue that came up was for God's sake don't give this information to people who want to sell you something or want to use that information for their own private profit-making purposes. At least keep it within the criminal justice element to take these criminals off the street.

So we have all these issues that we have to worry about. We can get our heads laid to us real quick if we jump out there even though we may be doing the right thing in some cases if they think this information is going to leak out to insurance companies or anybody else on the side. It's not a very good feeling to be sitting in an elected office and have these people and organizations swoop down on you saying you may have started out doing good, but you've ended up going in the wrong direction.

So we've got to be very careful about it. We have added in Florida Chapter 943.325 started in 1989, so it's not -- I mean we didn't just start all of this. It included sexual battery and lewd and indecent exposure to juveniles. The database began in 1990. By '93 we had started collecting from homicide and attempted homicide individuals. By '95, my first year in the Florida legislature, I helped to cosponsor some of this legislation that added carjacking, home invasion, robberies, and aggravated battery to that list that the collections can be made, and then, of course, we brought it down to this year where we added burglary.

When you're talking about these issues, what helped us to sell it was having all of these people for it and then throw in one little percentage, and that was when Florida Department of Law Enforcement said that 56% of all the people who are arrested, convicted, and in prison for burglary had committed sex crimes. That is where we begin to win the battle because when you can start to show tie-ins from starting out as a burglar to eventually getting brave enough whenyou get away with all that to start committing sex crimes and, of course, we all know in law enforcement sooner or later someone breaking into someone else's home is going to confront somebody in your family in that house and guess what is going to happen? They're either going to be beat beyond comprehension and hurt badly or they're going to be killed because that person can't afford to walk out of that house and be identified, especially if they're a second or third time offender.

In Florida we have lowered the boom on repeat offenders. Three strikes and you're out. I helped sponsor that. That's in effect right now. You commit three serious crimes, felony crimes in the State of Florida, you're going to spend some serious time in prison. They know that. That makes them a little edgy. We voted in to stop turning out poisoners in the State of Florida. You add all of this to what we've already done, and these people are going to get antsy about being caught, which says in stop turning out prisoners they have to serve 85% of their sentence. Even if they're the best model prisoner that the prison system has, they're going to spend 85% of their sentence in prison.

They get a little antsy about getting caught, which means you're going to have more and more people committing violent crimes because of it; however, the great part about this DNA process in my opinion is you are taking the worst of the worst, and it's only probably 15, 20 percent of the real bad guys who are committing hundreds of crimes in many states or you're going to take those people off the street for a long time and protect citizens.

So it's the opinion of most within the legislative process it's worth getting beat on by ACLU and some of these more liberal groups as to why you should do this to protect your families, your friends, your neighbors from these repeat offenders.

So getting bills done in the legislative process -- and I don't imagine any of you here from any state in this country, your legislature is much different than ours in Florida. It's the same train with the same type of engine driving the train, and it's usually public comment. It's usually groups like the sheriffs, the police chiefs, various organizations that get together that want to take care of a problem that drive that train, but there has to be some confidence when you get done first of all that you're -- we have to be ever mindful that we're not violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

I was telling Chief Chandler back there one of the issues I'm waiting to come to the Supreme Court is whether or not now that DNA is such a sure bet by most jurists' opinion as to whether you're guilty or not, whether the taking of the DNA since it's almost a sure thing can be challenged under the Fifth Amendment now.

It was brought up, well, we take fingerprints and we've managed to get by that, but in my opinion DNA is a little bit sharper than fingerprints when it comes to matching up and showing the convictions. I would be willing to bet you it's going to go to court at some point in time depending on how many convictions and how many people are going to make that challenge, but it will be challenged. So we have to be ever mindful that we don't include so many things from the legislative arena that people feel the Orwellian society has finally gotten here because thatscares people.

We've seen in Florida and I guess it's this way around the country that people still distrust government. I don't care if it's local, state, or federal government. When these types of issues with police forces as big as we have in this country are organized to fight crime, it's not just the criminals -- I mean they certainly don't want to protect criminals, but they get so afraid of being watched by government, and we have to be ever mindful that there is still that group of people out there, a large group of people who are a little bit standoff-ish when it comes to big government.
So those are some of the issues that we have to face when we pass a bill, but when you show 50% of those who burglarize homes commit sex crimes, I can guarantee you there are a lot of women in the State of Florida who want to see this bill go through. So you've got to get the right forces behind you to get these passed, and that's what it takes. If you have your sheriffs and your police chiefs that don't work together that well, this may be a chance because most of them want to put those people behind bars that need to be there. Maybe this is their chance to pull together and work together to get their legislators to stick their necks out and fight for those types of bills to protect the public.

So I appreciate the opportunity to come here and speak with you today.

DR. BOYD: Do we have any questions? There don't appear to be any, so I want to thank you for two interesting presentations, and I'll turn it back over to your attorney and I'll save the next lawyer joke for the next meeting.

MR. ASPLEN: Thank you, folks. We appreciate that. That's kind of the whole point right there. We've talked what about the goal is and the solution to the problems that we've identified, and this is important information as we kind of work towards solving those problems. Let's take a short break and then we will set up for our last push for the day.

(Whereupon a brief break was taken.)

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