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Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'Pimps' and websites: AI-driven system has no legal standing yet in Pa., but delivers warnings to 'customers'
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – At noon on a regular Monday last month, a website showed about 80 sex-worker advertisements in the areas of Johnstown, Indiana and Altoona. A search in the Pittsburgh area showed a woman was willing to travel to Somerset County. Human Trafficking logo Nick Lembo, an executive director of Street Grace – a Georgia-based organization that uses a Microsoft-developed platform to disrupt human trafficking – searched the website and shared his screen over Zoom with The Tribune-Democrat. There were male and transgender categories on the website to search. Lembo went to the 'men seeking women' category, which produced a cascade of ads. 'Believe it or not, around the lunch hour can be busier,' he said. 'So it could start picking up right now in your area. And then sometimes guys are getting off work at 4 p.m., so it can start then. And I'd say most of the time, probably from 5 p.m. through 10 p.m. at night are the busiest times.' However, the women available through the ads are often not engaging in these transactions of their own volition, he said. 'Most of these women are being forced against their wills by pimps,' he said. 'There's this attitude that sex work is a legitimate profession, and these girls are just doing it on their own, and these guys (who purchase) will often say, 'Well, I know they are doing it on their own.' And the reality is, they really don't, because these girls are never going to give up their pimps. 'The pimps want to stay way in the shadows,' he said. Statistics are unclear on the scope of the human trafficking problem. Research supported by the National Institute of Justice in 2020 revealed that labor and sex trafficking data appearing in the FBI's national Uniform Crime Reporting Program may significantly understate the extent of human trafficking crimes in the United States. 'Researchers concluded that human trafficking incidents identified in law enforcement and social service agency records likely represented only a fraction of the actual incidence,' the institute's website says. 'Forcing these women' Using an artificial intelligence-human hybrid system called Transaction Intercept, Lembo and teams of civilians working with Street Grace post decoy ads on websites where men go to purchase sex. Street Grace also offers the same platform, at no cost, to law enforcement. State Sen. Cris Dush has been a proponent of using the technology in Pennsylvania; however, so far, it has not been used in the commonwealth for human trafficking prosecutions, Lembo said. Lembo and others working with Street Grace engage with men initiating conversations with their decoy ads and attempt to 'crack some humanity' into them, Lembo said. In one case, he spoke to a U.S. soldier who had returned briefly from deployment. He explained to the man that he was not law enforcement. ' 'We are here to protect you, actually, because if you are caught, this will affect you socially and professionally,' I said. That got to him,' Lembo said. 'I didn't realize it later that he was a soldier, and many guys in the military know their career is very important to them.' The soldier shared with Lembo that he 'was just looking for some comfort.' He had returned home from deployment, his girlfriend had broken up with him, and he was not scheduled to be home for long. Lembo warned him. 'I said, 'You need to be careful because there are pimps on these websites, and that's who is forcing these women,' ' Lembo said. 'He said, 'Honestly, I didn't know that. ... I'm going to warn my buddies about these websites.' ' If a potential buyer is unwilling to listen, and if Lembo has enough information, then he'll turn it over to police. In other cases, he can be successful in changing a buyer's mind by educating them about human trafficking. 'There's somebody there who still wants to listen to some reason, and probably the biggest thing we run into is educating these men into understanding that most of these women are being forced against their wills by pimps to have sex with them,' he said. Force, fraud or coercion At times, victims or people close to victims will call the National Human Trafficking Hotline, the top Google result for help. Victims from Cambria and Somerset counties have called the hotline and spoken to someone on the other end – such as Malika Said, a hotline supervisor – who will begin the conversation by asking whether the caller is in a safe place where they aren't being monitored by their trafficker. Said is then obligated to tell callers about the hotline's mandated reporting policies – the hotline must report acts of violence heard over the phone or discussions of minors being abused or neglected. And then Said gives them a basic summary of what trafficking is and asks the caller whether their situation aligns with that; trafficking situations involve force, fraud or coercion. 'And then we let the callers take it from there,' she said. 'And we assess their needs and provide whatever it is that they want.' Said may call a local shelter while on the phone with a caller and say: 'We have this person who's on the phone and they are looking for a safe place to stay tonight; can you help them?' 'We don't want the victims to be calling all these places on their own and just get rejected,' she said, 'especially if all the shelters are full, so we try to see if we can connect them to a place first, and if they are OK with that, then we connect them in a three-way call.' The hotline may also connect callers with case managers from local human service agencies, who can provide access to housing, food support, securing a job – any service that may eliminate the vulnerability that a trafficker is exploiting. 'A lot of times, people are recruited into the trafficking situations because they have certain vulnerabilities, whether it's economic or social vulnerabilities,' she said. 'Because of these vulnerabilities, they will get recruited into a situation where they are forced to do things they don't want to do, and because of all these limitations that the trafficker sets on them, they feel it's hard to get out of the situation.' If a victim relies on a trafficker for food or housing, for example, it's difficult for the victim to leave that situation on his or her own. 'There's a lot of times that we do get callers who are ready to leave, but find it very difficult so we talk them through the possibilities; we safety-plan with them, we give them the right resources,' according to Said. 'Not everyone is ready to report to police when they call the hotline, so we just talk through all the options that they have.' Both sex and labor Consolidating duplicate calls about the same case, the hotline identified a total of 12 likely victims across six trafficking situations in Cambria County from 2015 to 2022. 'Sometimes we have one situation/one victim call, but more often it's one situation/multiple victims,' National Human Trafficking Hotline spokeswoman Sabrina Thulander said. The hotline's data are not representative of all trafficking in Cambria County, only of the cases that are reported and identified by the hotline. The volume of calls can be affected by factors including awareness of trafficking as an issue and awareness of what help is available, Thulander said. The Cambria County cases were almost entirely situations and victims of sex trafficking, she said. More recent data are available, but it has not yet undergone the same level of validation as the data from previous years, she said. In Somerset County, the hotline identified three likely victims of trafficking from 2015 to 2022. In those cases, two of the three victims reported they were a victim of both sex and labor trafficking, Thulander said. 'I think with labor it tends to be more fraud, whereas, with sex trafficking, it's force or coercion,' she said. Labor trafficking can occur through a regular job posting, according to Said. 'They don't really outline what's happening and people are desperate for work, and they get sucked into it,' she said. 'There will be recruiters for some farming industries and so they will kind of recruit you into the trafficking situation, and it might be similar to a regular farming position, but you don't know the difference between the two. 'Sometimes it could also be for modeling; it can be a modeling job posting, but then you get recruited into it and all of a sudden you are in a sex trafficking situation.' 'Investigating ... cases' For Pennsylvania as a whole, from 2015 to 2022, the hotline identified a total of 2,566 likely victims and 1,487 individual situations of trafficking. Of those, 359 of the likely victims were victims of labor trafficking, and 1,933 were victims of sex trafficking. Some of the most commonly reported venues for labor trafficking were domestic work, restaurants and food service, and agriculture/farms/animal husbandry. Some of the most commonly reported venues for sex trafficking were illicit massage businesses, hotel/motel-based commercial sex, residence-based commercial sex, pornography, and internet-based commercial sex, Thulander said. Cambria County District Attorney Greg Neugebauer said human trafficking investigations are underway locally with help from people who make reports. 'We've had tips from doctors, school personnel, religious folks,' he said. 'And sometimes someone just sees something that just doesn't look right, and they call police. We've had a number of cases that have been prosecuted and, frankly, we are actively investigating several cases right now.' One case locally came about because a search warrant was executed on a completely unrelated matter, he said, 'and we discovered some things that were troubling.' In another instance, he said, a trafficker ended up going to jail for an unrelated crime, and authorities subsequently discovered that a person had been sex-trafficked. 'We've seen it locally,' he said. 'I think it exists everywhere, and I think the statistics are accurate that it goes unreported. A lot of it.'
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
How the Boulder attack highlights the danger to soft targets
New Orleans, Harrisburg, Washington D.C., and now Boulder -- four attacks, all carried out by radicalized individuals targeting soft civilian locations. These tragedies have left communities grieving and the nation once again asking: why? Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the threat landscape in the U.S. has evolved dramatically. That coordinated attack involved complex planning, training and support networks. MORE: Boulder group leader recounts 'panic' as attack unfolded: 'They're literally on fire' Nearly a quarter century later, terrorist groups have adapted. Instead of highly organized cells, they now often rely on so-called "lone wolves" -- people radicalized in isolation who require little to no external coordination. These actors can strike without warning, making prevention increasingly difficult. The 2025 Department of Homeland Security Threat Analysis highlights this shift. "Lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat of carrying out attacks with little to no warning," it said. "Violent extremist responses to domestic sociopolitical developments -- especially the 2024 election cycle -- and international events are likely to inspire attacks in the Homeland." This observation aligns with the findings of the 2015 study "Lone Wolf Terrorism in America," which defined lone wolf terrorism as politically motivated violence carried out independently, without direct command or ties to established groups. The radicalization of these individuals, the study found, often follows a pattern: personal and political grievances, online affinity with extremist sympathizers, identification of an enabler, broadcasting of intent and a final triggering event. In today's digital age, the radicalization process has been drastically accelerated by the internet and dark web. Radicalization is the key to perpetuating these attacks and the study validated a series of commonalities associated with pathways to radicalization for lone wolf terrorists. MORE: Pittsburgh synagogue massacre: Remembering the 11 victims The radicalization model indicated that lone wolf terrorism begins with a combination of personal and political grievances which form the basis for an affinity with online sympathizers, which is what we have seen in large measure since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. This is followed by the identification of an enabler, followed by the broadcasting of terrorist intent. The final commonality is a triggering event, or the catalyst for terrorism, as noted by the National Institute of Justice. It highlighted that terrorist organizations now have unprecedented access to vulnerable individuals, who can be radicalized and equipped with rudimentary tools of violence -- all with the click of a mouse. A 2017 University of Maryland study drove the point home. "Since 2006, 98% of all deaths from terrorism in the U.S. have resulted from attacks carried out by lone actors," it said. Their preferred targets? Almost always soft ones -- unprotected public spaces where civilians gather freely. MORE: 2 Israeli Embassy staffers killed in 'act of terror' in Washington, DC Combating this expanding threat requires focused action across three key areas: mindset, signatures and planning. America must move from a place of denial to proactive vigilance. A security mindset involves proactively considering potential risks, vulnerabilities and taking steps to mitigate them. This includes thinking like an attacker and constantly being on the lookout for security flaws, which is best done with the coordination of local law enforcement. Mindset for the public also includes accepting the "see something say something" mantra and ensuring that whenever anyone sees something strange or makes them uncomfortable, they report it to 911 or local law enforcement. That may mitigate a threat in itself. Public participation is vital. Adopting a "see something, say something" approach and encouraging citizens to report suspicious activity to authorities can help thwart attacks before they happen. MORE: Gov. Shapiro gives sit-down interview from residence after arson attack For law enforcement, prevention depends on recognizing key behavioral signatures: Political or personal grievances. Alignment with online extremist networks. Public declarations of violent intent. Association with enablers. Recent triggering events. Early identification of these markers can be crucial in stopping a threat before it materializes. Public events and soft targets -- places like music festivals, sporting venues, shopping centers, houses of worship, or restaurants -- are attractive to attackers because of minimal security and maximum impact. Security planning must become an essential part of every public gathering, regardless of size or location. This means: Coordinating with local law enforcement. Developing tailored incident response plans. Training staff and volunteers on emergency procedures. Creating systems to report and respond to concerns. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) emphasizes the importance of planning to secure public gatherings. We must confront the reality that terrorism today often does not come from abroad or in large groups -- it comes from within, from individuals radicalized online and motivated by perceived injustice or ideological fervor. These lone actors, acting on grievance and enabled by the internet, present a formidable and evolving threat to American public life. To keep communities safe, security must no longer be an afterthought. It must be integrated into every public event and venue -- supported by awareness, informed by intelligence and rooted in partnership between citizens and authorities. Only through collective vigilance and proactive planning can we hope to disrupt the next lone wolf before they strike. Donald J. Mihalek is an ABC News contributor, retired senior Secret Service agent and regional field training instructor who served during two presidential transitions. He was also a police officer and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. Richard Frankel is an ABC News contributor and retired FBI special agent who was the special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark Division and prior to that, the FBI's New York Joint Terrorism TASK force. The opinions expressed in this story are not those of ABC News.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
How the Boulder attack highlights the danger to soft targets
New Orleans, Harrisburg, Washington D.C., and now Boulder -- four attacks, all carried out by radicalized individuals targeting soft civilian locations. These tragedies have left communities grieving and the nation once again asking: why? Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the threat landscape in the U.S. has evolved dramatically. That coordinated attack involved complex planning, training and support networks. MORE: Boulder group leader recounts 'panic' as attack unfolded: 'They're literally on fire' Nearly a quarter century later, terrorist groups have adapted. Instead of highly organized cells, they now often rely on so-called "lone wolves" -- people radicalized in isolation who require little to no external coordination. These actors can strike without warning, making prevention increasingly difficult. The 2025 Department of Homeland Security Threat Analysis highlights this shift. "Lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat of carrying out attacks with little to no warning," it said. "Violent extremist responses to domestic sociopolitical developments -- especially the 2024 election cycle -- and international events are likely to inspire attacks in the Homeland." This observation aligns with the findings of the 2015 study "Lone Wolf Terrorism in America," which defined lone wolf terrorism as politically motivated violence carried out independently, without direct command or ties to established groups. The radicalization of these individuals, the study found, often follows a pattern: personal and political grievances, online affinity with extremist sympathizers, identification of an enabler, broadcasting of intent and a final triggering event. In today's digital age, the radicalization process has been drastically accelerated by the internet and dark web. Radicalization is the key to perpetuating these attacks and the study validated a series of commonalities associated with pathways to radicalization for lone wolf terrorists. MORE: Pittsburgh synagogue massacre: Remembering the 11 victims The radicalization model indicated that lone wolf terrorism begins with a combination of personal and political grievances which form the basis for an affinity with online sympathizers, which is what we have seen in large measure since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. This is followed by the identification of an enabler, followed by the broadcasting of terrorist intent. The final commonality is a triggering event, or the catalyst for terrorism, as noted by the National Institute of Justice. It highlighted that terrorist organizations now have unprecedented access to vulnerable individuals, who can be radicalized and equipped with rudimentary tools of violence -- all with the click of a mouse. A 2017 University of Maryland study drove the point home. "Since 2006, 98% of all deaths from terrorism in the U.S. have resulted from attacks carried out by lone actors," it said. Their preferred targets? Almost always soft ones -- unprotected public spaces where civilians gather freely. MORE: 2 Israeli Embassy staffers killed in 'act of terror' in Washington, DC Combating this expanding threat requires focused action across three key areas: mindset, signatures and planning. America must move from a place of denial to proactive vigilance. A security mindset involves proactively considering potential risks, vulnerabilities and taking steps to mitigate them. This includes thinking like an attacker and constantly being on the lookout for security flaws, which is best done with the coordination of local law enforcement. Mindset for the public also includes accepting the "see something say something" mantra and ensuring that whenever anyone sees something strange or makes them uncomfortable, they report it to 911 or local law enforcement. That may mitigate a threat in itself. Public participation is vital. Adopting a "see something, say something" approach and encouraging citizens to report suspicious activity to authorities can help thwart attacks before they happen. MORE: Gov. Shapiro gives sit-down interview from residence after arson attack For law enforcement, prevention depends on recognizing key behavioral signatures: Political or personal grievances. Alignment with online extremist networks. Public declarations of violent intent. Association with enablers. Recent triggering events. Early identification of these markers can be crucial in stopping a threat before it materializes. Public events and soft targets -- places like music festivals, sporting venues, shopping centers, houses of worship, or restaurants -- are attractive to attackers because of minimal security and maximum impact. Security planning must become an essential part of every public gathering, regardless of size or location. This means: Coordinating with local law enforcement. Developing tailored incident response plans. Training staff and volunteers on emergency procedures. Creating systems to report and respond to concerns. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) emphasizes the importance of planning to secure public gatherings. We must confront the reality that terrorism today often does not come from abroad or in large groups -- it comes from within, from individuals radicalized online and motivated by perceived injustice or ideological fervor. These lone actors, acting on grievance and enabled by the internet, present a formidable and evolving threat to American public life. To keep communities safe, security must no longer be an afterthought. It must be integrated into every public event and venue -- supported by awareness, informed by intelligence and rooted in partnership between citizens and authorities. Only through collective vigilance and proactive planning can we hope to disrupt the next lone wolf before they strike. Donald J. Mihalek is an ABC News contributor, retired senior Secret Service agent and regional field training instructor who served during two presidential transitions. He was also a police officer and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. Richard Frankel is an ABC News contributor and retired FBI special agent who was the special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark Division and prior to that, the FBI's New York Joint Terrorism TASK force. The opinions expressed in this story are not those of ABC News.
03-06-2025
- General
How the Boulder attack highlights the danger to soft targets: Analysis
New Orleans, Harrisburg, Washington D.C., and now Boulder -- four attacks, all carried out by radicalized individuals targeting soft civilian locations. These tragedies have left communities grieving and the nation once again asking: why? Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the threat landscape in the U.S. has evolved dramatically. That coordinated attack involved complex planning, training and support networks. Nearly a quarter century later, terrorist groups have adapted. Instead of highly organized cells, they now often rely on so-called "lone wolves" -- people radicalized in isolation who require little to no external coordination. These actors can strike without warning, making prevention increasingly difficult. The 2025 Department of Homeland Security Threat Analysis highlights this shift. "Lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat of carrying out attacks with little to no warning," it said. "Violent extremist responses to domestic sociopolitical developments -- especially the 2024 election cycle -- and international events are likely to inspire attacks in the Homeland." This observation aligns with the findings of the 2015 study "Lone Wolf Terrorism in America," which defined lone wolf terrorism as politically motivated violence carried out independently, without direct command or ties to established groups. The radicalization of these individuals, the study found, often follows a pattern: personal and political grievances, online affinity with extremist sympathizers, identification of an enabler, broadcasting of intent and a final triggering event. In today's digital age, the radicalization process has been drastically accelerated by the internet and dark web. Radicalization is the key to perpetuating these attacks and the study validated a series of commonalities associated with pathways to radicalization for lone wolf terrorists. The radicalization model indicated that lone wolf terrorism begins with a combination of personal and political grievances which form the basis for an affinity with online sympathizers, which is what we have seen in large measure since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. This is followed by the identification of an enabler, followed by the broadcasting of terrorist intent. The final commonality is a triggering event, or the catalyst for terrorism, as noted by the National Institute of Justice. It highlighted that terrorist organizations now have unprecedented access to vulnerable individuals, who can be radicalized and equipped with rudimentary tools of violence -- all with the click of a mouse. A 2017 University of Maryland study drove the point home. "Since 2006, 98% of all deaths from terrorism in the U.S. have resulted from attacks carried out by lone actors," it said. Their preferred targets? Almost always soft ones -- unprotected public spaces where civilians gather freely. A Three-Pronged Approach to Mitigation Combating this expanding threat requires focused action across three key areas: mindset, signatures and planning. 1. Mindset: A Cultural Shift Toward Security Awareness America must move from a place of denial to proactive vigilance. A security mindset involves proactively considering potential risks, vulnerabilities and taking steps to mitigate them. This includes thinking like an attacker and constantly being on the lookout for security flaws, which is best done with the coordination of local law enforcement. Mindset for the public also includes accepting the "see something say something" mantra and ensuring that whenever anyone sees something strange or makes them uncomfortable, they report it to 911 or local law enforcement. That may mitigate a threat in itself. Public participation is vital. Adopting a "see something, say something" approach and encouraging citizens to report suspicious activity to authorities can help thwart attacks before they happen. 2. Signatures: Identifying Warning Signs For law enforcement, prevention depends on recognizing key behavioral signatures: Political or personal grievances. Alignment with online extremist networks. Public declarations of violent intent. Association with enablers. Recent triggering events. Early identification of these markers can be crucial in stopping a threat before it materializes. 3. Planning: Securing the Soft Targets Public events and soft targets -- places like music festivals, sporting venues, shopping centers, houses of worship, or restaurants -- are attractive to attackers because of minimal security and maximum impact. Security planning must become an essential part of every public gathering, regardless of size or location. This means: Coordinating with local law enforcement. Developing tailored incident response plans. Training staff and volunteers on emergency procedures. Creating systems to report and respond to concerns. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) emphasizes the importance of planning to secure public gatherings. We must confront the reality that terrorism today often does not come from abroad or in large groups -- it comes from within, from individuals radicalized online and motivated by perceived injustice or ideological fervor. These lone actors, acting on grievance and enabled by the internet, present a formidable and evolving threat to American public life. To keep communities safe, security must no longer be an afterthought. It must be integrated into every public event and venue -- supported by awareness, informed by intelligence and rooted in partnership between citizens and authorities. Only through collective vigilance and proactive planning can we hope to disrupt the next lone wolf before they strike. Donald J. Mihalek is an ABC News contributor, retired senior Secret Service agent and regional field training instructor who served during two presidential transitions. He was also a police officer and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. Richard Frankel is an ABC News contributor and retired FBI special agent who was the special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark Division and prior to that, the FBI's New York Joint Terrorism TASK force.
CNN
28-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
How a controversial type of warrant helped convict a former Arkansas police chief of a decades-old rape
Crime GeneticsFacebookTweetLink Follow DNA evidence has become a cornerstone of modern police work, be it through the use of genetic genealogy or submitting material found before modern advances in testing. One tool, known as a John Doe DNA warrant, has made news after a former police chief serving sentences for murder and rape escaped from an Arkansas prison Sunday. This type of warrant uses DNA recovered from a scene to help identify a suspect not known by name, keeping open cases that might have already hit a statute of limitations, according to the National Institute of Justice, the research branch of the US Department of Justice. 56-year-old Grant Hardin, who escaped from prison Sunday, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the death of James Appleton in February 2017, according to court documents. When his DNA was entered into the Arkansas DNA database, it triggered a 14-year-old warrant issued in connection to the 1997 rape of a schoolteacher in Rogers, showing him to be a match to the semen sample taken from the scene. He was charged with the woman's rape, and later pleaded guilty to two rape charges associated with the case. Hardin's case is just one example of how these warrants have been used over the last 25 years. While some think this specialized warrant is a new opportunity for justice, legal experts argue that DNA is not infallible — and this practice has the potential to violate the rights of suspects. Here is how John Doe DNA warrants have been used over the last 25 years. In 2000, a Wisconsin prosecutor issued a John Doe DNA arrest warrant on a 1994 sexual assault case, just days before the statute of limitations was about to run out, according to a retelling from the National Institute of Justice. The warrant was based on the perpetrator's DNA profile obtained from evidence, the National Institute of Justice said. While it was a new concept, the prosecutor argued the DNA profile could be accepted by the court as an identification of the person who was to be arrested. About three months later, the system identified the DNA profile as Bobby Dabney, a Wisconsin inmate who was ultimately convicted for the sexual assault at trial, the National Institute of Justice said. A 2003 Wisconsin Court of Appeals decision upheld the use of a John Doe DNA warrant, saying the case didn't violate the statute of limitations, and his due process rights weren't violated. An earlier case took decades to pan out. In March 2000, California authorities issued a John Doe DNA warrant associated with three sexual assault cases in northern California from the 1990s. Since the perpetrator's DNA was not already in state systems, it made it harder to identify, but they were able to narrow down their suspects through genetic genealogy, which blends DNA analysis in the lab with genealogical research. Authorities arrested Mark Jeffery Manteuffel in relation to the case across the country in Georgia in 2019. He pleaded guilty to two charges of forcible rape and one count of sodomy in 2020, the Associated Press reported. In 1997, Amy Harrison, a teacher, went to her school on a Sunday as she prepared for the week ahead. A church service was being held in the nearby cafeteria, so she was aware of others being in the building, a probable cause affidavit in the case said. After being at the school for a bit, she went to the bathroom in the teacher's lounge. But when she came out, she was attacked and raped by a man pointing a gun at her, the document said. While the assault was underway, she wiped a liquid substance off her leg and onto her sweatshirt, which authorities were able to get a DNA profile from, the affidavit says. While investigators spent the next six years trying to find the perpetrator, they had no luck, former Rogers Police Chief Hayes Minor said in an Investigation Discovery documentary on the case. (Investigation Discovery, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.) 'The laws of the state were very different then. And there's something called a statute of limitations, and basically what that means is that after a certain length of time, that case can no longer be prosecuted,' he said, adding that the day the assault happened was when 'the clock starts ticking for us.' After those six years, they wouldn't be able to prosecute the perpetrator even if they found him, Minor said — so they decided to try using a DNA profile on the warrant, as it had been recently used by a Wisconsin prosecutor to keep their case open. 'I typed it up, prosecuting attorney's office approved it, and we go to the judge and he signed it, which gave us then an active arrest warrant. We just had to figure out who it was that had that DNA,' Minor said in the documentary. It took 14 years before the DNA profile was connected to Hardin. While prosecutors continue to use John Doe DNA warrants, some law and professional organizations argue against them. In 2004, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Board of Directors adopted a resolution against the warrants, saying 'those charged in such a manner could be seriously hampered in their ability to mount an effective defense.' They argue that many factors could play into the reliability of DNA samples, including degradation over time, errors in collection and issues in storage. 'DNA is but one tool of many that should be utilized in determining whether an individual is responsible for a particular crime,' the resolution says. CNN has reached out to the organization to inquire if they still hold this position two decades later. The use of John Doe DNA indictments 'subverts defendants' rights by working around legislatively created statutes of limitations,' writes Emily Clarke in her 2019 journal article in the American Criminal Law Review. She argues instead for removing the statute of limitations in rape cases altogether. Not abiding by the statute of limitations could also undermine a fundamental tenet of the criminal justice system, Clarke wrote. 'In a society where defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, courts of law should not be relying on the presumption that whoever left DNA at the scene of a crime is guilty,' the article says.
