{"id":54,"date":"2013-06-17T10:05:49","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T14:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/?p=54"},"modified":"2014-09-09T15:19:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T19:19:57","slug":"supreme-court-permits-dna-sampling-of-persons-arrested-but-not-yet-convicted-in-maryland-v-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/2013\/06\/17\/supreme-court-permits-dna-sampling-of-persons-arrested-but-not-yet-convicted-in-maryland-v-king\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Permits DNA Sampling of Persons Arrested, But Not Yet Convicted, in Maryland v. King"},"content":{"rendered":"

We wrote earlier this year on the Fourth Amendment issue presented in Maryland v. King:<\/span> whether a Maryland statute that allows the state to obtain DNA samples via \u201ccheek swabs\u201d from arrested individuals, as one step in the state\u2019s routine booking and processing procedure, is an invalid warrantless search.<\/p>\n

Maryland takes its samples before any finding of guilt has been secured. To go one step further, these samples are, in most instances, factually unrelated to any aspect of the offense being investigated or charged. Instead, Maryland uses the DNA samples as a comparative tool: it tries to match the samples with DNA evidence from other \u201ccold\u201d unsolved crimes. The swabs are taken even though there may be no articulable \u201cindividualized suspicion\u201d that a particular arrestee may have had anything to with any prior offense.<\/p>\n

The dispute started with Mr. King, who was arrested for menacing a group of people with a shotgun and, accordingly, charged with assault. Under Maryland\u2019s \u201cDNA Collection Act\u201d, a police employee rubbed the inside of Mr. King\u2019s cheek with a cotton swab during the arrest booking procedure. This yielded a DNA sample, which was then uploaded onto a computerized database. Mr. King\u2019s DNA was found to match a DNA sample from an unsolved rape in 2003.<\/p>\n

Mr. King was indicted for that rape and a second DNA sample, obtained via a search warrant this time, confirmed the match. His motion to suppress the DNA evidence was denied by the trial court and Mr. King was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.<\/p>\n

The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the taking of DNA evidence from suspects, arrested but not yet convicted, violated the Fourth Amendment, as the individual\u2019s expectation of privacy outweighed the State\u2019s interest in using Mr. King\u2019s DNA.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s decision came on June 3rd, a 5-4 opinion authored by Justice Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito, Thomas and Breyer.<\/p>\n

The majority upheld the swab procedure; while finding it to be a search, the Court nevertheless classified it as a minimal warrantless intrusion and a reasonable exercise of state power.<\/p>\n

The Court spoke at length about the prevalence of DNA testing and analysis in society and its proven reliability, citing District of Attorney\u2019s Office v. Osborne<\/span> for its discussion of the technology\u2019s power to both identify the guilty and exonerate the innocent.<\/p>\n

The Court placed reliance on some protective aspects of the Maryland statute: that samples are only taken from people arrested for \u201cserious\u201d offenses, that the sampling process is delayed until after arraignment (thus presumably exempting cases dismissed early or charged mistakenly) and that the samples are destroyed if the suspect is acquitted or the charges dismissed.<\/p>\n

The gist of the Court\u2019s opinion is really that DNA sampling is now a routine part of law enforcement practice\u2014on par with fingerprinting and photography in the routine identification and processing of suspects, that Mr. King\u2019s privacy was not intruded upon by the swab and that Maryland\u2019s statute was reasonable.<\/p>\n

Justice Scalia dissented, joined by Justices, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. (This interesting breakdown of justices, both in the majority and dissent, has been heavily commented on).<\/p>\n

The Scalia dissent is wonderfully written and worth reading for its literary merit alone. The dissent argued, among other points, that in order to be constitutionally permissible, warrantless searches have traditionally had to present a justifying motive above and beyond the mere investigation of crime.<\/p>\n

As Justice Scalia stated \u201c\u2026 suspicion less searches are never allowed if their principal end is ordinary crime solving.\u201d This, to the dissent, seems to have been the critical limitation\u2014the complete disconnect between the Maryland testing and the crime Mr. King was charged with. Searching every car on the road or doing DNA testing on every airplane passenger might also prove a boon to crime prevention, Scalia argued, but the system is just not built that way.<\/p>\n

King<\/span> is a major Fourth Amendment decision and a must read. Justice Scalia\u2019s views on the Fourth Amendment are just consistently fascinating and well worth following.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We wrote earlier this year on the Fourth Amendment issue presented in Maryland v. King: whether a Maryland statute that allows the state to obtain DNA samples via \u201ccheek swabs\u201d from arrested individuals, as one step in the state\u2019s routine booking and processing procedure, is an invalid warrantless search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6,60,25,59,61],"ppma_author":[243],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-breslin","tag-dna-samples","tag-fourth-amendment","tag-maryland-v-king","tag-warrantless-search"],"authors":[{"term_id":243,"user_id":174,"is_guest":0,"slug":"erbreslin","display_name":"Eric R. Breslin","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2014\/08\/breslineric-125x150.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Breslin","first_name":"Eric R.","first_name_2":"","job_title":"","user_url_2":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/ericrbreslin.html","description":"Read Eric's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}