NJ police used baby DNA to investigate crimes, lawsuit claims

Illustration by Ana Kova

Public defenders in New Jersey say that police may have taken blood samples from babies.

The practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample. The father of the child was linked to a crime by the analysis of his blood sample.

An alert was sent to the office by the techniques used to identify the suspect. The state of New Jersey is being sued by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor.

Newborns in the state of New Jersey are required to have a blood sample taken within 48 hours of birth to be tested for 60 different disorders. The data from these samples is shared with the state health authority and communicated to parents.

Law enforcement agencies don't have access to the blood samples. If police are able to reliably obtain the samples through subpoena, the disease screening process is entering all babies born in the state into a database with no ability to refuse.

Parents and the public are not aware that blood samples taken from their children can be used in this way.

According to a section of the lawsuit, the public would be shocked by what has happened in the case of the OPD client. It is believed that parents would be shocked to learn that their children's blood samples are being stored by the Department of Health for more than twenty years and are being accessed by law enforcement agencies without their knowledge or consent.

Prior to the lawsuit, public records requests were denied by the state for information on subpoenas served to the lab that conducts the disease screenings.

The New Jersey State Police can't comment on pending litigation.

There are different laws for DNA collection across the US. Laws around the length of time that samples can be held for varies from state to state, with some requiring that they be expunged if criminal charges aren't pressed within a certain amount of time.