2022/10/18

Forensic Magzine, October 17, 2022: NJ Bill Limits Use of Newborn Dried Bloodspot Cards

Lawmakers in New Jersey have introduced a bill that would prevent police from using newborn bloodspots for anything other than detecting disease.

The bill, Bill A4642, is a direct response from lawmakers regarding a 2021 rape case. Last year, New Jersey State Police subpoenaed the New Jersey Department of Health in order to obtain the dried bloodspot card of a 9-year-old child. They then used genetic genealogy to identify the child’s father and arrest him for the rape of a 10-year-old girl in 1996 and a five-year-old girl in 2003.

Subsequently, the Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor filed an Open Public Records Act request to see how many more, if any, subpoenas have been served on the state public laboratory, but it was denied. Both parties are now suing the laboratory, are the Office of the Public Defender has taken the arrested man on as a client.

“By serving a subpoena upon the Newborn Screening Laboratory, the State Police sidestepped its constitutional obligation to develop probable cause and obtain a warrant so that it could obtain a buccal swab from OPD’s client to perform an analysis of his DNA,” the lawsuit reads. more