Aggregated News

A new Ohio law requiring anyone arrested on a felony charge to submit a DNA sample has more than doubled the amount of samples the state collected for its DNA database last year.

The law that took effect in July 2011 expands the database beyond offenders convicted of a felony crime.

The office of Attorney General Mike DeWine says 43,317 samples came from arrestees through July 1 last month, on top of samples from 24,809 convicted offenders taken during the same period

DeWine's office says it collected about 2,800 samples per month before the law took effect, compared with about 6,000 samples per month now.

Ohio, which joined several other states in collecting arrestee DNA, has about 478,000 total samples in its database.