Woman sues city over DNA use

Brut America

A woman is suing the city of San Francisco after DNA she provided for her sexual assault case was used years later to arreset her for an unrelated crime. Here’s what happened …

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00:00San Francisco police used DNA collected from a rape victim as evidence to arrest her for a

00:05totally unrelated crime and now she's suing the city. So how did this happen and is it even legal?

00:11Root can explain in less than 60 seconds. A woman has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of

00:16San Francisco after evidence collected for her 2016 sexual assault case was then used against

00:22her for an unrelated property crime. The DNA was kept in the San Francisco Police Department Crime

00:27Lab database and while federal law does not allow sexual assault victims DNA to be entered into

00:32CODIS, local law enforcement is not bound to the same restrictions. Once the district attorney found

00:38out how the DNA had been obtained, the felony property crime charges were dropped. The police

00:43chief also said that its crime lab had stopped using DNA obtained from sexual assault victims

00:48to solve other crimes after receiving a complaint from the DA's office. Advocates fear that these

00:53type of arrests and procedures will discourage other victims from coming forward to law enforcement

00:58to report sexual assault.

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