State Wants Lawsuit Tossed Over Police Use Of ‘Rapid DNA' Technology

By Dana DiFilippo, New Jersey Monitor

September 18, 2025

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin is urging a judge to dismiss a lawsuit the state public defender’s office filed to learn more about how state police use and store genetic evidence analyzed using “rapid DNA” technology.

The public defender’s office sued in July after learning during discovery in a criminal case that the state has maintained what the office called a secret database of rapid DNA evidence since 2021. Such storage risks civil rights abuses because it’s unregulated, was not authorized by legislators, and is largely unknown to the public, the lawsuit said. The office wants the internal memo it says “authorized” state police to create the database, but Platkin’s records custodians have refused to disclose it.

In a filing last week, Platkin argued that the public defender’s office already has a copy of the state police’s manual explaining how rapid-DNA tests are performed at crime scenes and police stations and how that genetic data then gets stored. So they don’t need the May 2021 internal memo, which was written by a lawyer with the state’s criminal justice division, the filing says.

That memo did not authorize rapid DNA and instead contains legal research and analysis addressing how law enforcement agencies should use rapid DNA technology and how criminal defendants could challenge its use, Platkin says. It’s a deliberative document and predated the attorney general’s July 2021 decision to green-light the use of rapid DNA, making it exempt from disclosure under the state’s Open Public Records Act, the state argued.

Platkin’s office also denied the public defender’s claim that people whose DNA winds up in the database don’t have a clear path to remove it.

“Disclosure would create a profound chilling effect on the government because agencies would no longer be assured that their internal deliberations are protected. Such result would be absurd,” the filing says.

The technology allows officers to get DNA results within about 90 minutes, bypassing backlogs and sometimes lengthy delays at DNA laboratories. Critics have questioned its accuracy, raising concerns about quality controls.

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