People accused of violent crimes in Dakota County later this month will have to comply with a new procedure — a sheriff's deputy collecting a DNA sample with a swab on the inside of the cheek.
It's a return to a short-lived statewide practice from 2006, halted that year by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which found it was unconstitutional. Dakota County is the first Minnesota county to revive the procedure following a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that it is legal to collect DNA before someone is convicted of a crime.
State forensic scientists who will analyze the DNA say they are ready to pick up the work. Yet critics who still call the practice an unreasonable search and seizure think it will eventually be disrupted again by further legal challenges — something even Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said he expects to happen within the next six months.
"And that's fine," Backstrom said. "I believe the law is valid. I believe it's enforceable."
What happens with the Dakota County cases could influence whether other law enforcement agencies decide to collect DNA samples before someone is convicted. Officials in Hennepin and Ramsey counties have said they are still examining the issue in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
Based on 2014 arrests, Dakota County could send about 375 samples for analysis. The extra samples aren't expected to disrupt the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's turnaround time of processing DNA samples within 38 days, said laboratory director Catherine Knutson.
In the few months of 2006 when the BCA analyzed pre-conviction DNA samples, it turned out that 85 percent of them were from people who were ultimately convicted, Knutson said. The state would have collected DNA from those people anyway after conviction.
"It's not really an increase in volume," she said. "It's just that they're coming in a little bit sooner than they had before."