Familial DNA used to solve a crime, privacy questions raised.
 

Denver, Colorado (CNN) -- Using DNA to catch criminals has become common, but Denver police this year demonstrated how the practice can be taken to a new level: They tracked down a suspect not through his DNA, but through that of his brother.

Here's how it happened, the Denver district attorney's office said:

In February 2008, two cars were broken into in the city. Police found blood at both scenes and ran the samples through DNA databases but couldn't find a match. Then, as part of a study being conducted by the district attorney's office, investigators used new software to see whether the DNA in the blood was close enough to potentially be from a family member of someone in the criminal DNA database.

The software came up with six potential matches. Five didn't pan out, but one led police to a convicted car thief and, ultimately, that man's brother, Luis Jaimes-Tinajero.

After further investigation, Jaimes-Tinajero in September pleaded guilty to one count of criminal trespass and received a sentence of two years' probation.

Attempts to contact Jaimes-Tinajero for this report were unsuccessful.

District Attorney Mitch Morrissey called it one of the first cases in the country to use software to find familial DNA matches.

"Our hope here is to show that it works, which we have done," he said. "I think it's a valuable way to generate leads."

Morrissey's office developed the software tool with the Denver police, he said. He hopes to use it to solve murders, rapes and cold cases.

The matches to family members won't be used as evidence itself, he said, but rather as a way to generate leads for investigators to explore, similar to the way police may use an eyewitness report of a partial license plate.

"There's no reason to bring this into court," Morrissey said. "You use the science, you use the DNA, then you use a conventional investigation."

But some privacy advocates are crying foul.

"Family members have done nothing wrong to get in the database," said Maryland defense attorney Stephen Mercer. "And this is an example of the web of suspicion of people who have committed offenses being widened to include their entire family."

Mercer has been fighting familial DNA searches since 2003. He was part of an effort that led to Maryland being the first state to outlaw familial DNA searches.

"People have a reasonable expectation of privacy of their DNA," he said. "It's a basic violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution"

Morrissey disagrees.

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That's how they determined Dennis Rader was the BTK Killer. They compared a sample of DNA from his daughter that was on file at a doctor's office and compared it to evidence from BTK crime scenes.

If your blood is in the system for crime, I say fair game to use it for a match for a family member who may be in danger (kidnapping scene w/ blood, etc.) or to find a potential suspect who has left DNA evidence at a scene.

If your blood is at a crime scene and you aren't the victim or it appears highly suspicious... let's safely make the leap...

I wouldn't call this overstepping the boundaries or anything. You don't want to be in the system? Do your best to keep your nose clean. You don't want your blood from a crime scene (non-victim) being traced back to your family, don't commit crime.

That isn't the issue. The blood they are running against the DNA in the system is the blood of someone who hasn't been arrested, much less convicted, of a crime, only suspected. Innocent until proven guilty. If it turns out to be a match, then that is one thing - any DNA in the system is there for a legitimate reason. But to then take the search a step further and to search for DNA matches to family members in the system is another matter. It puts everyone who has a family member in the DNA database - for whatever reason - at a disadvantage in our justice system.

This is a kind of weird and probably legally unsupportable way of looking at it, I think, but to me how I feel about it varies by what kind of crime were talking about. For property crimes, it seems distasteful, but for kidnapping, rape or murder? It doesn't bother me so much.

I think that is probably how a lot of people FEEL about it - but talk about your slippery slopes.

Didn't they just find out that DNA evidence is as faulty as any other kind?