It is Ridiculously Hard for Californians to get their DNA out of the FBI’s Genetic Database

In 2012, Silicon Valley millionaire Ravi Kumra was murdered during a home-invasion robbery. During the investigation of the crime scene, police found DNA under Kumra’s nails that seemed sure to belong to the person who had attacked him. When police checked the FBI genetic database, they found a match: Lukis Anderson, a homeless man previously convicted of a residential burglary. Anderson, who had suffered brain damage after being hit by a truck, denied murdering Kumra, but couldn’t remember where he’d been that night, so things were looking pretty bad for him.

But thanks to medical records, according to the San Jose Mercury News, Anderson’s lawyer was able to prove that his client was at a hospital that night; he’d passed out from drinking too much and been picked up by an ambulance—the same ambulance that later went to Kumra’s house. “His DNA turned up at the murder scene only because paramedics inadvertently transferred it there, via a simple oxygen-monitoring probe they’d clipped first onto his finger and then onto the dead man’s,” recounted the Mercury News last...