Others were people associated with Busken, including fellow college dancers and even stagehands who worked at the university. Defense attorneys and civil libertarians call the sweeps an improper violation of the constitutional right to privacy. A few such DNA dragnets have taken place in this country, but there's little precedent for determining their legality. Mass blood screenings are more common abroad, where the first was in 1987 in England when 5,000 people had their blood tested after two teen-agers were raped and murdered. Fred Leatherman, chairman of the Forensic Evidence Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he knew of no legal challenges to block mass screenings in the United States.
Critics fear what happens to DNA samples after they're collected.
Some suspect they would be used in future investigations by forensic scientists who sometimes make errors, or that they might end up in the hands of health insurance companies that could see which diseases a person is predisposed to develop. It smacks of the kind of police state tactics that this country has gone to war against. Most of the 200 men tested so far gave their blood voluntarily, but prosecutors obtained search warrants in a few cases where people declined to provide the sample. Stuermer's photograph ran on the front page of the state's largest newspaper after a woman in jail who knew his family said he might be Busken's killer. In the months it took to get the results of the DNA test, his landlord tried to evict him, a boss threatened to fire him and a few personal relationships deteriorated.