Fifteen years after two young women were brutally raped in 1989 in the city, Suffolk County prosecutors still had no suspects to offer but they used the DNA of one of the rapists to press for a grand jury indictment against “John Doe DNA,” a growing strategy. Mostly used in rape cases, the John Doe DNA indictments help prosecutors to bring charges against a DNA profile before they can identify the suspect. The indictments also allow the cases to stay open indefinitely as prosecutors evade the statute of limitations that, in Massachusetts, requires rape suspects to be charged within 15 years of the crime. The strategy that began in Milwaukee in 1999 has spread to other states and is expected to continue expanding as states’ DNA databases grow. At the federal level, the U.S. Congress passed a bill in April to allow prosecutors to use the John Doe DNA indictments for federal sex offenses.
