PRISON DNA TEST CHALLENGE DENIED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 8, 1992                   TAG: 9202080302
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
PRISON DNA TEST CHALLENGE DENIED
A federal court judge in Roanoke once again has shot down a challenge by Virginia prison inmates who claim their rights are violated when they are forced to give blood for DNA testing.
U.S. District Judge James Turk ruled Friday that Stacy L. Ewell, a 29-year-old prisoner at Buckingham Correctional Center, and four other inmates failed to demonstrate that they would be irreparably harmed by giving blood for DNA testing.
State Department of Corrections officials want to take the blood of all of Virginia's 13,000 prison inmates and put DNA information from the samples into a crime-solving computer.
DNA is the material in humans that provides an almost unique genetic "fingerprint." Police can use DNA fingerprints in blood and other body fluids found at crime scenes to help track down the guilty person.
Ewell's suit is the second court challenge to the inmate DNA-testing law.
In a lawsuit last year, Turk ruled that the state had the right to demand that inmates give up their blood for DNA tests. But he said the state didn't have the right to hold up the parole of inmates who refused.
In the second suit - filed last month in U.S. District Court - Ewell and the other convicts claimed that prison officials have found a backdoor way of holding up the release of prisoners who won't give blood - taking away their right to time off for good behavior.
Inmates who behave themselves behind bars can get as much as one month of "good time" subtracted from their sentences for every month they serve.
Attorneys for the state argued that the new lawsuit is simply a scheme to prevent the DNA testing program from becoming a reality.
They said that inmates who break the law by refusing to give a DNA sample are obviously guilty of bad conduct that would disqualify them from getting "good time." To prevent the state from punishing them would make it powerless to enforce the DNA law.
But Harold Krent, a University of Virginia law professor who represented the inmates, said the punishment does not fit the crime.
Inmates can be parole violators, get into fights or disobey guards' orders and still get some good-time credit, he said.
Just about the only offenses behind bars that disqualify inmates from earning good time are murder, escape or refusing a blood test, Krent said.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB