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Posted on 06/03/2013 7:37:46 AM PDT by Perdogg
The Supreme Court has ruled criminal suspects can be subjected to a police DNA test after arrest -- before trial and conviction -- a privacy-versus-public-safety dispute that could have wide-reaching implications in the rapidly evolving technology surrounding criminal procedure.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Reading the ruling it appears that their logic was that a DNA sample is no different than taking fingerprints. That could open up a big can of worms, there are a lot of occupations that require you to be fingerprinted, I wonder if they will require a DNA sample as well?
Supreme Court rules on DNA testing. This is a point of contention in the Wisconsin legislature right now.
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This is an interesting split of the vote of the court.
BAD news for America.
Why do that? Now the the courts have ruled that DNA is no different than a fingerprint, I'm guessing the next step will to add a provision on a bill requiring a DNA sample to be taken from all newborns at birth in order to be given an SS number. Everybody else will have to provide a sample to renew their drivers license or participate in Obamacare.
A pretty wierdly divided opinion it seems to me. Scalia comes down on the side of Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan.
I have mixed feelings. To me it definitely is self-incrimination without rights, yet I can see it is also a public safety issue, too. BUT, a BIG but....it can be and will be used irresponsibly and no guarantees through its use can be assured.
Now, if, say, a DNA test were done, AND it was required to be compared against whatever DNA has to exist re: the crime the accused is held for, and further, if that comparison cannot be compared as positive, ALL charges must be forced to be immediately dropped, no ifs ands or buts....then I’d support it.
If there is no existing DNA to be compared to that resulted from a crime, then gathering DNA from a suspect could not be done.
What's to stop the Feds from extractng DNA from every newborn under the auspices of Obamacare?
Nothing.
I was trying not to go there, it was too depressing. But you are correct.
However, cops are as individuals not people I make it a routine to trust for any reason. I have known too many bad ones.
All you DNA belong us
Breyer, probably the softest liberal, sides with the majority. Scalia joins the hardcore liberals in dissent.
Interesting breakdown. Very in4eresting.
The problem is not in taking the DNA samples to compare against known criminal suspect DNA. The problem is in *retaining* those samples or their information after testing, permanently associating those individuals to their DNA, while keeping custody of evidence.
As things are now, once the federals have your DNA, they have it forever. And they want every sample state and local police get to be shared with them.
In a broad sense, this is a police agency saying that they want evidence that can be used to convict people at a later date given to them now. While that is half legitimate, the potential for abuse is ridiculously high.
It would be extremely easy to take a known DNA sample, use it to contaminate other evidence, then “obtain” that DNA from the evidence.
If you think this is improbable, back in the days when fingerprinting was new, burglars in England would buy special gloves, with rubber fingertips, that had been engraved by a forger with the fingerprints of a dead man.
Police crave DNA samples from everyone, and in England, the government has approved a giant, national DNA database, hoping to have the DNA of all its citizens.
US police, mostly federal, crave this same ability, and have been pressuring the congress and judiciary for years to get it.
The tremendous irony is that DNA gets everywhere, and your DNA is probably on tens of thousands of things in your area, and could implicate you in a crime you had nothing to do with. All that is required is that your DNA is pretty exclusive to the tested object, so if it has been cleaned recently, even if hundreds of people have touched it, the sample could be all you.
why would Thomas and Alito be for this?
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Put down the gun and say ahh.
I personally cannot see a difference (as far as identification of someone who left a “souvenir” at the scene of a current or earlier crime) between the two.
Hell, I'd retina scan the suspect also and make him pass a retina scan as part of the release process. That's probably because I'm from Maryland where it is not uncommon for an incorrect prisoner to be released upon assuming someone elses identity for that purpose.
I can. Fingerprints used as evidence have context whereas DNA does not.
Imagine a trial involved a murder by bludgeoning:
Forensics expert: "We found the defendant's fingerprints on the weapon in an overhand grip pattern..."
or
Forensics expert: "We found the defendant's DNA on the weapon..."
Maybe there was other DNA on the weapon as well but the police didn't "like" the owners of the other samples for the crime.
“...Maybe there was other DNA on the weapon as well but the police didn’t “like” the owners of the other samples for the crime.”
***************************************************************
Well, you do know that when a piece of evidence (e.g., fingerprints or swabs for DNA analysis) is submitted for examination by an expert or a lab and a report comes back, the cops don’t get to “edit” the report. The report is the report, whether the cops like it or don’t like it because it might not fit their theory of the crime.
Now if there are corrupt cops or a corrupt States Attorney office (such as the one currently persecuting George Zimmerman in Florida) involved, they may try to withhold evidence—but this corrupt withholding of evidence could encompass fingerprint evidence as easy as DNA evidence.
This is an area with which states have no duty to implement. Just because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it can be done, does not prevent a state legislature from outlawing the practice.
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