Governor Andrew Cuomo touted his proposal to expand the DNA database as a popular initiative backed by most state law enforcement officials – but critics say the proposal doesn’t do enough to exonerate the innocent.

The governor’s proposal would expand the current database to include DNA samples from anyone convicted of any felony or penal law misdemeanor.

“Expanding the DNA Databank will protect New Yorkers and modernize our state's criminal justice system,” Cuomo said. “This crucial crime fighting tool embraces technology to help convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent.”

All county District Attorneys, county sheriffs and more than 400 New York State police chiefs back the initiative, Cuomo said.

But some civil rights advocates, as well as the Chief Judge of New York State, Jonathan Lippman, have said it's necessary to address methods of reducing the number of wrongful convictions while discussing the DNA database expansion — not only in order to ensure that the guilty are convicted but also the innocent are exonerated.

In his State of the Judiciary speech last week, Lippman said convicted defendants’ access to DNA testing should be enlarged, police interrogations should be videotaped and advances in eyewitness identification need to be made.

“It’s a major stain on the criminal justice system in New York and around the country,” Lippman told WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show Wednesday about wrongful convictions.

Stephen Saloom, Policy Director of the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people, called Chief Judge’s  Lippman’s proposals “a really solid set of reforms,” which “the Legislature should be focused on.”

“Expanding the DNA database to capture the DNA of everyone who commits even the lowest level crime in New York State is just not what the priority should be right now,” Saloom said. “We really need wrongful conviction reform.”

The state DNA database was created in 1996, and has been expanded four times. Currently, anyone convicted of a felony or one of 36 misdemeanors under the penal law must provide a DNA sample.

The Republican-controlled state Senate passed the DNA Databank Expansion bill in January, but the Democrat-led state Assembly members have indicated they want to add provisions before passing it, primarily ones that ensure defendants’ greater access to the database.