NEW ORLEANS — The case of the Louisiana serial killer could help determine the line between the interests of an investigation and personal privacy now that police have DNA collected from more than 1,000 men during the search for a suspect.
A man is in custody, and already one man who was ordered to submit to testing is suing to have his DNA removed from police files.
Mary Ann Godawa, spokeswoman for the task force that led the hunt, said Friday that officials have not decided what to do with the DNA bank. She referred further questions to Baton Rouge District Attorney Doug Moreau, who did not immediately return a call.
During the hunt for the killer, hundreds of men were asked to provide mouth swabs for DNA analysis. Police said the vast majority of the DNA samples were supplied voluntarily, though critics question whether it was truly voluntary, saying some men may have felt intimidated or figured it would be easier to just go along with the police.
Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Silver Spring, Md., said DNA dragnets are an easy way to eliminate suspects.
But he added: "It's going to take society a little time to develop the right balance in maintaining privacy and expediting criminal investigations."
In his lawsuit, Shannon Kohler contends police lacked sufficient grounds to take his genetic information while looking for the man who killed five women in southern Louisiana since 2001.
"Our constitutional protections are supposed to protect us from this type of behavior because, without that, we basically live in a police state," said Kohler, a welder in Baton Rouge.
While DNA dragnets have taken place around the country, the American Civil Liberties Union is aware of only one other person to successfully sue for the return of his genetic sample. That was Blair Shelton, who gave a sample in 1995 during an investigation into a series of rapes in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The ACLU is not involved in Kohler's case but supports his effort, said Barry Steinhardt, a privacy rights specialist with the ACLU's national office in New York.
"All those samples should be destroyed," Steinhardt said. "These are people who are, in a sense, certifiably innocent, and there's no justification for holding on to their samples."
Kohler said he received unjust notoriety when police went public with his refusal to voluntarily give his DNA. Ultimately a judge ordered him to supply a mouth swab. It turned out not to match genetic evidence from the killer's victims.
Many men were asked to give samples based on anonymous tips or their resemblance to an early profile of the suspect as an introverted white man.
Derrick Todd Lee, who is black, was arrested in the five slayings this week after his DNA sample was collected by an investigator working on an unrelated case.
Police are continuing their investigation of Lee, who also is suspected in a 1992 slaying and the 1998 disappearance of Randi Mebruer, 28, of Zachary.
In East Feliciana Parish, investigators tore up parts of two driveways and inspected a third concrete area, looking for Mebruer's body. Lee, who once worked for a concrete company, poured the slabs, but Sheriff Talmadge Bunch said nothing was found.