Committee adopts amendment and advances bill allowing judges to order deceased suspects’ DNA entered in the database

The House Judiciary Committee adopted an amendment and advanced House Bill 340, a measure designed to remove statutory barriers to entering certain deceased individuals’ DNA into the Combined DNA Index System.

Sponsor testimony explained the bill’s goal: to allow judges to order DNA from suspects who died before being charged with a felony to be entered into the statewide and national databases to help resolve open criminal cases. The bill also would mandate automatic DNA entry for individuals who died in custody or were released before July 1997, provided the DNA had been collected in accordance with law.

Committee members reviewed a narrowly tailored amendment that replaced the phrase “in prison” with “incarcerated” to better match the population described in the statute. Representative Gerald Little (introduced as a co-sponsor) explained that the change is intended only to clarify wording and not to broaden the bill’s scope. The committee adopted the amendment by unanimous voice vote with no recorded opposition.

After public testimony in support from a family member who described the decades-long effort to identify a murderer, the committee approved a do-pass recommendation for the bill. Committee members indicated the amendment was technical and that the bill aims to help investigators close cold cases while ensuring statutory language aligns with practice.