A 21st-Century Police Sketch, Based on Your DNA

by Matt Kelley · 2010-05-19 07:07:00 UTC
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The old-fashioned suspect sketch used to be hand-drawn, based on eyewitness descriptions. But today, researchers around the world are developing forensic tests than can draw pictures of perpetrators based on crime scene evidence. Sounds pretty cool, right? In fact, the methods are far from perfect, and police should proceed with extreme caution.

As I've previously written, police in the U.K. are already using an "ethnic inference" test to track perpetrators of unsolved rapes and murders. Likewise, Louisiana police apprehended an alleged serial killer after DNA tests suggested correctly that he was black — after witnesses had said he was white.

Right now, as an article in this month's issue of Scientific American describes, the cutting-edge research in the field is focused on how to determine eye and hair color from DNA. But researchers also see the potential for officials to build composite sketches (like the one at left) based on DNA tests within a decade.

Using imperfect tests to project someone's racial background or eye color raises a host of questions. Will investigators focus on unreliable facial indicators and miss other forms of evidence? Will juries put undue weight on a DNA-based composite when weighing guilt or innocence?

To be sure, a study at Rotterdam's Erasmus University found that DNA analysis could predict eye color with better than 90% accuracy. But a 10% error rate is still unacceptable. Casting a wide net over people from a certain racial background or inferring guilt based on an eye color is a dangerous proposition. If and when these technologies come into use, they will need to be tightly controllled.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that a handful of U.S. states — including Indiana, Wyoming and Rhode Island — currently don't allow the use of DNA to infer physical characteristics. These states are right to keep these forensic methods at arm's reach until they can be better tested. Unfortunately, DNA exonerations have shown that wrongful convictions are still all too common.

And until we approach 100% accuracy in our technology, we shouldn't be arresting anyone based on whether their eyes are brown or blue.

Photo Credit: Kencaesi

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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