Supreme Court will consider whether DNA can be taken from arrestees

[Jenna]

A man wearing a hat and scarf and brandishing a gun had raped and robbed a 53-year-old woman in her home and then vanished into the night. Almost six years later, Alonzo King was arrested in a nearby county and charged with felony second-degree assault. Taking advantage of a Maryland law that allowed DNA tests following felony arrests, police took a cheek swab of King's DNA which matched a sample from the 2003 Salisbury rape. King was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison.But then a Maryland court said they had to let him go.King was never convicted of the crime for which he was arrested and swabbed. Instead, he pled guilty to the lesser charge of misdemeanor assault, a crime for which Maryland cannot take DNA samples. The courts said it violated King's rights for the state to take his DNA based on an arrest alone. The state Court of Appeals said King had "a sufficiently weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches."On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will try to balance the rights of Americans who have not been convicted of a major crime to keep their DNA out of the government's hands against the government's interest in closing cold cases and the rights of crime victims to finally see justice done.If the justices rule for King, more than 1 million DNA profiles that have been stored in a federal database for matching with future crime scene evidence may have to be purged and others will never be collected, leading some repeat offenders to go free, advocates say

Court takes up question of arrestee DNA sampling

[HudsonHawk]

Hmm... this will definitely be an interesting case to keep an eye on.

In US v Kelly the court determined that it did not violate a person's constitutional rights to finger print him subsequent to arrest, because fingerprinting was a widely practiced method of identification. Finger printing was minimally intrusive, used in other facets, and was "not in itself a badge of crime".

DNA testing is used for other reasons than for law enforcement. While I'm not aware of anyone who get "employment DNA swabs", it is often used for paternity or medical testing. My state currently requires DNA samples to be provided after convictions of certain crimes. I believe that existing case law can be applied to require suspects to submit to a buccal swab at arrest.

[SteelCityK9Cop]

Or..... what if after an arrest if I turn my cuffs into our crime lab for them to recover touch DNA from someone I arrested... would the courts look at this as you have an expectation of privacy... great case law coming for the next generation of crime fighters.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[JLK]

"a sufficiently weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches." this is just based on the brief read but if they had PC for an arrest they would have had enough for the search. that would be like making a PC felony drug arrest and when the pos makes a plea deal for a lesser misdemeanor charge giving them back the drugs that made it a felony in the first place.