Kansas Strikes 'John Doe' Rape Warrants
The Kansas Supreme Court has struck down arrest warrants in seven rape cases—reportedly the first in the country to charge someone’s DNA with a crime.
In its ruling Friday, the high court said the warrants weren’t specific enough to meet legal standards, the Wichita Eagle reports.
The paper notes that while the decision means that death-row inmate Douglas Belt won’t face trial for the rapes, it offers hope to prosecutors because the court didn’t completely bar the widely used “John Doe” warrants.
“This is actually a good day for law enforcement,” Marc Bennett, an assistant district attorney in Sedgwick County, is quoted as saying.
The Wichita Eagle notes that Kansas now joins California, Wisconsin and Ohio, the states in which DNA-based warrants have survived appeal.
In the Belt case, however, the court ruled that the warrants were invalid because they didn’t fully describe the makeup of Belt’s DNA profile.
“The bottom line of the ruling is that even John Doe warrants have to describe an individual in specific detail,” Rebecca Woodman, who argued Belt’s case, is quoted saying.
