Bonnie Craig case leads to crime bill amendments

Three changes in the law suggested by the mother of murder victim Bonnie Craig were added to the omnibus crime bill making its way through the Alaska Legislature this week.

One proposal calls for anyone arrested for a felony crime or a crime of violence against another person to have their DNA entered into a national database that law authorities across the country use to crack unsolved crimes. The second change imposes a deadline of about 90 days for the state to do this.

Current law says only after a conviction for these crimes is DNA entered into CODIS, the national database.

The third amendment pushed by Craig's mother, Karen Foster, and added to the crime bill removes the 10-year statute of limitations on the crime of kidnapping.

Craig was beaten and raped and left for dead at McHugh Creek in 1994. The 18-year-old was abducted while walking to a bus on the way to an early morning college class.

Kenneth Dion, who is currently serving a prison sentence in New Hampshire for robbery, was charged with her death on April 27 after his DNA was put into the national database and Alaska State Troopers discovered a match to the DNA found on Craig's body. He was not charged with kidnapping because the statute of limitations had passed, authorities said.

Foster has been lobbying legislators for several weeks to pass the proposals.

The amendments were introduced by Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, on Wednesday. Both the state Department of Public Safety and state Department of Law are tweaking the language on the amendments.

"We wanted to honor Bonnie Craig and we wanted to do it right away," Wielechowski said Thursday.

Wielechowski pointed to a recent study by the Alaska Judicial Council that says 59 percent of all offenders are re-incarcerated at least once for a new offense.

"Let's take their DNA when arrested and let's match them up," he said. "There are a small percentage of people committing crimes in our communities."

He said he wants to catch them before they re-offend.

If the person arrested is exonerated, their DNA will be removed from the national database, the proposed law says.

If the omnibus crime bill makes it through the Senate Finance committee, it will move to the Senate floor for a vote. The legislation would then have to go back to the House with the amendments for another vote of approval.

To clear the state's backlog of some 2,700 DNA samples that have yet to be entered into the national database and to accommodate the additional samples that the new measure would call for, the state crime lab will need to hire more forensic scientists, lawmakers say. Funding for those positions is still being worked out, they said, but they believe they may be able to access federal grants.

Daily News reporter Megan Holland can be reached at mrholland@adn.com.