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When fingerprints first started being used by law enforcement to identify people civil libertarians, freedom fighters and legal experts said that allowing the police to take fingerprints from people and use the prints against them was a violation of the 5th Amendment because it forced people to testify against themselves.
Sadly the Supreme Court didn't agree with that and now the police routinely force people to give them their fingerprints, which are put into police databases and used to identify people. It looks like the same path is going to be taken with DNA according to this Supreme Court decision. Supreme Court upholds Maryland law, says police may take DNA samples from arrestees By Robert Barnes, Monday, June 3, 8:08 AM E-mail the writer A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that police may take DNA samples as part of a routine arrest booking for serious crimes, narrowly upholding a Maryland law and saying the samples can be considered similar to fingerprints. “DNA identification represents an important advance in the techniques used by law enforcement to serve legitimate police concerns for as long as there have been arrests,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the 5 to 4 ruling. The decision overturned a ruling by Maryland’s highest court that the law allows unlawful searches of those arrested to see whether they can be connected to unsolved crimes. The federal government and 28 other states allow taking DNA samples. The court split in an unusual fashion. The dissenters were three of the court’s liberals, and conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who amplified his displeasure by reading a summary of his dissent from the bench. “The court has cast aside a bedrock rule of our Fourth Amendment law: that the government may not search its citizens for evidence of crime unless there is a reasonable cause to believe that such evidence will be found,” Scalia said from the bench. He added: “Make no mistake about it: Because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.” Scalia was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Kennedy wrote that the decision was more limited than that: DNA can be taken from those suspected of “serious” crimes. He said that police have a legitimate interest in identifying the person taken into custody and that the DNA samples could make sure that a dangerous criminal is not released on bail. “By comparison to this substantial government interest and the unique effectiveness of DNA identification, the intrusion of a cheek swab to obtain a DNA sample is a minimal one,” Kennedy wrote. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. The challenge to the Maryland law was brought by Alonzo Jay King Jr., whose DNA was taken after a 2009 arrest for assault and used to connect him to an unsolved rape.
Supreme Court allows police to take DNA from criminal suspects By David G. Savage June 3, 2013, 7:58 a.m. WASHINGTON -- The police may take a DNA sample from people arrested for serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a major victory for law enforcement and crime victims. The 5-4 decision is likely to make the taking of DNA samples as common as taking fingerprints or a photograph when people are arrested. More than half of the states now require a DNA mouth swab when persons are charged with a serious crime, and many of the others were awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the practice. The FBI’s national database has more than 11 million DNA samples on file, and that number is likely to grow sharply in the years ahead. The high court said DNA has an “unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty,” and that taking a mouth swab from an arrestee was not an “unreasonable search.” “When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for the court. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito were included in the majority. The decision in the case of Maryland vs. King upheld the rape conviction of Alonzo King. When he was arrested for an alleged assault, his DNA sample identified him as the perpetrator of an unsolved rape. Justice Antonin Scalia spoke for the dissenters, saying the 4th Amendment did not permit searching persons for other crimes they may have committed. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed with him. Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook david.savage@latimes.com |