Andrea Roth mentioned in ScienceNews, December 17, 2018

Innocent people looking for long-lost family may be surprised to find that putting their DNA on a public website opens them and their relatives to police scrutiny, says Andrea Roth, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley Law.

She and other critics charge that genetic genealogy searches put too many people under police scrutiny and should be regulated like law enforcement databases. For instance, California allows police to do family searches of law enforcement databases only as a last resort for the most serious crimes and limits what material can be used. Roth would go a step further: People whose DNA is collected as part of a genetic genealogy investigation and are not linked to the crime must have their data wiped from police databases.

Andrea Roth interviewed by KABC, May 1, 2018

“There’s no Golden State Killer exception to the Fourth Amendment, so we have to independently think about how we view this technique as a technique that would be used in all future cases.”

Andrea Roth quoted by Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2018

It’s easy to see why people would cheer the use of such tactics, Roth said. But “before we celebrate, we have to remember that the government probably looked at a lot of innocent people before getting here.”

Andrea Roth quoted by The Daily Californian, Jan. 18, 2018

“This award will allow me to pursue a book project on the rise of machines and algorithms in criminal justice that will take extensive research assistance,” Roth said during her address. “…To attend a training in empirical methods, and to attend a number of international conferences that will lend a new comparative perspective to my work on technology and criminal justice.”

Andrea Roth quoted by San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 4, 2017

“You have to show the error mattered — that it wasn’t harmless,” she said. In previous cases on appeal, Roth said, she’s argued an error wasn’t harmless by pointing to inconsistency in verdicts and suggesting the jury may have compromised — violating their instructions.

Andrea Roth cited by The Daily Signal, May 3, 2017

Berkeley law professor Andrea Roth summed up Stuntz’s argument, saying that these rules … have “rendered trials too expensive” and complex for anyone but elite lawyers to tackle. In turn, writes Roth, this “has driven prosecutors and lawmakers to seek ways to avoid trial and force pleas through draconian sentencing schemes, a skewed focus on easily detected urban drug crimes mostly committed by racial minorities, and ever-expanding substantive criminal law.”

Andrea Roth quoted by Daily Journal (registration required), Nov. 7, 2016

“In these cases, we know that errors — such as faulty eyewitness reports, inaccurate forensic evidence, false confessions and more — led to wrongful conviction because of DNA testing,” Roth said.

Andrea Roth quoted by San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2016

“The well-acknowledged truth is that there is no known relationship between THC blood levels and increased relative crash risk,” Roth wrote in a California Law Review paper. If anything, she said, the studies suggest “that drivers with only THC in their blood are not causing a disproportionate number of fatal crashes.”

Andrea Roth quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 2, 2015

“For many people out there, the concern about drugged driving is one of the main political hindrances to supporting legalization,” she said. “And I think anything that could be seen as a legitimate way of dealing with DUI-marijuana can only help the legalization movement.”

Andrea Roth quoted in The Guardian, Nov. 9, 2015

“It is the type of creative sentence that in one sense seems a great reform move because it allows people to serve time while keeping their jobs, thus promoting re-entry and life stability,” said Andrea Roth. … “One would hope, however, that all defendants, and not just sheriff’s deputies, would get the benefit of such creative sentencing practices.”