Virginia's DNA database reaches a milestone

It's big news when police close a 30-year-old murder case using crime-solving tools they didn't have when the crime happened. Big news, too, when those same tools prove the innocence of men convicted of rapes long ago.

But the less sensational cases are no less remarkable, as this week's arrest for a burglary in Northern Virginia proves. It was the 5,000th time Virginia's DNA database has helped solve a crime.

Evidence from the crime matched DNA submitted more than a decade ago from a woman with several burglary and larceny convictions.

Under Virginia law, DNA samples are collected from everyone convicted of a felony, as well as those charged with violent felonies. Their samples become part of the state's database, which now contains 277,000 distinct DNA profiles.

Of the 5,000 crimes that have matched a profile in the database, the Department of Forensic Science reports that 9 percent were homicide cases; 16 percent were sex offenses; and 65 percent were offenses such as robbery, burglary, grand larceny or breaking and entering.

In recent years, DNA evidence cleared five men of rapes dating to the 1970s and '80s because their DNA didn't match newly discovered biological fluid, tissue or hair from the crime scenes. Two years ago, Henrico County police arrested a man for a 1977 murder using DNA evidence he submitted in 2004 for a felony weapons charge.

The 5,000-match milestone reached this week shows the database's value is twofold: It helps police get criminals off the streets, and it prompts reviews in cases where DNA evidence from a crime scene doesn't match that of the accused.