Orange County DA Settles DNA Collection Lawsuit: Misdemeanants Gain an Expungement Path
SANTA ANA, California — The Orange County District Attorney's Office and taxpayer plaintiff Professor William Thompson announced on October 16 the settlement of Thompson v. Spitzer, a case concerning the office's DNA collection program, in a joint press release. The terms of the settlement agreement are public.
The main provisions include: modifications of the procedures applicable to plea offers to misdemeanants when the district attorney seeks a DNA sample; removal of some DNA samples from the system; creation of a procedure for misdemeanants to obtain expungement of their samples; clarification of aspects of familial searching using the database; and additional public disclosures about how the DNA system operates.
According to the Daily Journal's account of the agreement, people charged only with municipal code violations, infractions or juvenile offenses are excluded from the database; profiles tied only to listed lower-level offenses will be expunged after 15 years, with samples destroyed within six months; and two exhibits list 1,323 covered earlier entries and 897 collected later. The defendants deny wrongdoing; the agreement provides no refunds and applies prospectively.
The taxpayer lawsuit was filed in 2021. Thompson was represented by O'Melveny and the Defending Democracy Clinic at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law; Paul Hoffman, the clinic's director, said the settlement is a step forward for privacy rights and gives people a way to get their material out of the system. District Attorney Todd Spitzer was represented by the County Counsel's Office.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于 Santa Ana 的橙县旧法院大楼（资料图，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 3.0）
