On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled it was legal for a DNA swab to be taken from anyone arrested for a serious crime.
TV crime shows have one less dramatic device at their disposal and real-life lawyers have one less hoop to jump through: getting DNA from an arrestee can now become as standard as fingerprinting. Sorry Law and Order, but no more sneaky DNA collection scenes.
And sorry criminals, but your DNA is fair game now.
When the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in Maryland v. King that it is legal and constitutional for police to take a DNA swab from anyone they arrest for a serious crime, TV execs and arrested criminals were not the only ones upset.
“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,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the four dissenting justices, in the courtroom after the decision was made. “This will solve some extra crimes, to be sure. But so would taking your DNA when you fly on an airplane — surely the TSA must know the ‘identity’ of the flying public. For that matter, so would taking your children’s DNA when they start public school.”
Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler is not as concerned about DNA swabbing becoming such a large practice, but does think the Supreme Court’s decision may soon lead to DNA swabs being legal for lesser crimes, like shoplifting.
“I don’t advocate expanding the crimes for which you take DNA, but the legal analysis would be the same,” Gansler said. “The reason why Maryland chooses to only take DNA of violent criminals is that you’re more likely to get a hit on a previous case. Shoplifters don’t leave DNA behind, rapists do, and so you’re much more likely to get the hit in a rape case.”
The decision was not one made lightly. Five of the nine justices voted for the idea while the others were vehemently opposed.
“Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s five-justice majority.
Taking DNA from people arrested for serious crimes is already legal and practiced in half of the states as well as the federal government. The ruling backs a Maryland law that already allows DNA swabbing of people arrested for serious crimes.
Alonzo King was convicted of rape after police took his DNA during an unrelated arrest and linked it to the rape that happened almost six years ago, and the Supreme Court’s ruling reinstates that conviction. Kennedy holds that using DNA to connect crimes is not an invasion of privacy:
The use of DNA for identification is no different than matching an arrestee’s face to a wanted poster of a previously unidentified suspect, or matching tattoos to known gang symbols to reveal a criminal affiliation, or matching the arrestee’s fingerprints to those recovered from a crime scene. DNA is another metric of identification used to connect the arrestee with his or her public persona, as reflected in records of his or her actions that are available to police.
While the ACLU voiced its disapproval of the decision, Scott Berkowitz, president and founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, cheered the decision and called DNA collection “a detective’s most valuable tool in solving rape cases.”
“We’re very pleased that the court recognized the importance of DNA and decided that, like fingerprints, it can be collected from arrestees without violating any privacy rights,” he said. “Out of every 100 rapes in this country, only three rapists will spend a day behind bars. To make matters worse, rapists tend to be serial criminals, so every one left on the streets is likely to commit still more attacks. DNA is a tool we could not afford to lose.”
Indeed, the decision only eliminates the need for a warrant for the cheek swab; DNA collection is already standard procedure in all 50 states.
The FBI’s Combined DN Index System (CODIS) contains more than ten-million criminal profiles, but DNA samples from people whose charges have been dismissed, who have been acquitted, or against whom no charges have been brought are expunged from the federal system—states make their own rules about what happens to DNA collections.
Though the Supreme Court made its ruling, the debate is far from over. Whether law enforcement around the country will take advantage of the ruling and identify violent criminals based on DNA from other arrests, like in King’s case, is yet to be seen, but civil rights groups are likely to protest the process in hopes of overturning the ruling.
Photo: Pelle Sten/Flickr