Interesting.. VA can use Familial DNA in special circumstances..
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/s...cle_65c19914-6b03-55b5-b686-73cbaf141ab5.html
Virginia News
CRIME SOLVING - August 19/2013
State confirms arrest resulting from familial DNA search
Details aren’t being released at the request of local authorities
Under Department of Forensic Science policy, familial searching is performed only to help solve violent crimes in which public safety remains at risk, other investigative leads have been exhausted, and a chief law enforcement officer makes the request.
Without specifying the type of crimes, Brad Jenkins, program manager of the department’s forensic biology section, said last week that there were several cases linked together by DNA that appeared to have been the work of the same unknown suspect.
“We conducted a familial search and came up with a possible relative … of the perpetrator. Police did their investigation and we did additional DNA (testing) and a person was arrested,” said Jenkins, who added that the trial is pending.
Unlike traditional searches that seek exact DNA profile matches, familial searches comb offender databases for near-matches of people who might be a parent, child or sibling of a suspect who left DNA at a crime scene, but whose DNA profile is not yet in a database.
Close to half of the people incarcerated in the United States report they had a close family member who had also been locked up and, presumably, their DNA profiles are also in databases.
http://www.readthehook.com/89512/dna-advance-harringtons-parents-pleased-familial-approval
"Four months after the parents of murdered Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington urged the Virginia Crime Commission to allow familial DNA searches to be conducted in unsolved homicides, the state is ready to begin using the tool, Governor Bob McDonnell announced Monday, March 21.
"I think this is going to be very valuable," says Morgan's father, Dan Harrington, "not only in Morgan's case, but in other unsolved crimes throughout the state.""