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The new method has been in force in Switzerland since the beginning of the month. Other countries are already using DNA phenotyping. A comparison.
It’s all about this: The revised DNA profile law has been in force since August 1st. Law enforcement authorities can now use DNA phenotyping if a comparison of the DNA trace with the database does not produce any results. According to the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol), this is available for investigations into serious crimes such as murder or rape.
This means the method for everyday use: “Of course, this change in the law should not be presented as a miracle cure,” says Hanspeter Krüsi, head of communications for the St. Gallen cantonal police. It is another possibility for the police, together with the public prosecutor’s office, to determine and ultimately convict the perpetrators. “I compare it to testimony, which is subjective. This variant, which we could use here, has been scientifically clarified.»
This is how much the method costs: The examination is around ten times more expensive than a conventional DNA analysis, explains Christian Cossu, forensic geneticist at the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Kantonsspital St. Gallen. In addition, the evaluation takes four days instead of one day.
These countries know the method: In 2003, the Netherlands was the first country in the world to create an explicit legal basis for DNA phenotyping. The trigger for the introduction of the method was a case of rape of a 16-year-old girl in 1999, who was then killed by the perpetrator. The suspicion initially fell on asylum seekers, since there was an asylum home 800 meters from the crime scene. Because the DNA database did not yield any traces of the perpetrator, the investigators used phenotyping for the first time. Thanks to the method, a farmer from the region who confessed to the crime was arrested in 2012.
A regulation on phenotyping has been in force in Slovakia since 2018. Germany also included the method in the Code of Criminal Procedure in 2019. In addition, in France, Great Britain and the USA, phenotyping is used in investigative practice. However, there are no explicit legal regulations in these three countries.
The method is used in these cases: The method is mostly used for serious violent crimes, whereby in Germany, according to the local code of criminal procedure, an extended DNA analysis can be carried out if there are no database hits, explains Cornelius Courts. He is Professor of Forensic Molecular Genetics at the University of Cologne.
“Some of our recent cases have been relatively similar and involved abandoned infants,” Courts said of his recent cases. It happens again and again that mothers abandon infants who then die at the place where they are exposed or who are stillborn and abandoned.
Traces of the mother’s DNA are often still attached to the infants or transport containers. But as a rule, such mothers cannot be found in the databases. In these cases, the mother could often be determined by phenotyping.
There are so many explanations: According to Courts, it is difficult to quantify how much more information phenotyping leads to. “More perpetrators will certainly be caught net than before the method was introduced.” But: “Nobody can be convicted because of a phenotyping result,” emphasizes Courts. This point must always be made against critics. One could at most get into the interest of the investigative actions by being asked to submit a DNA sample. “But if this DNA sample does not match the sample at the crime scene, the person can be immediately removed from the investigation and their DNA profile destroyed.”