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Posted on 10/02/2003 1:25:14 PM PDT by archy
FBI DNA program struck down
Court says prisoners can’t be ordered to give blood samples
BREAKING NEWS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 2 — A federal appeals court declared Thursday that it was unconstitutional to require federal prisoners or those on supervised release to give blood samples for the FBI’s DNA databank
A THREE-JUDGE PANEL of the 9TH U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the first federal appeals court to address the federal DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act, said requiring convicts to give blood for a criminal database was a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches.
Ruling 2-to-1, the San Francisco-based court said it was an unlawful invasion of privacy because the samples were taken without legal suspicion that the convicts were involved in other crimes.
The DNA samples are turned over to the FBI. The results are analyzed and placed in an FBI databank open to law enforcement nationally.
“Compulsory searches of the bodies of parolees ... require, at a minimum, reasonable suspicion,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote.
The Justice Department did not have immediate comment on the decision.
Monica Knox, a deputy public defender of Los Angeles, said the government had extracted blood from thousands of inmates and former prisoners on supervised release. She said the decision, if it survived appeal, could also nullify state laws that require the taking of blood from inmates.
“Most states have similar laws,” Knox said. “This could gut those.”
The court covers Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Idaho, Washington state, Montana, Nevada and Alaska.
It was not immediately clear whether the decision would apply retroactively, meaning that those who have given blood could have it withdrawn from the databank. In addition, Knox said, it was too early to say whether new convictions based on the blood samples would survive.
“That may have to worked out later,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Just don't parole them, or let them out on supervised release.
Leave them in prison to serve their term.
Reinhardt!
But the very fact that such a decision was handed down demostrates why it is imperative to outnumber the legal fools put on various federal benches by Democrats, with judges and Justices who will respect, obey and enforce the law, appointed by Republicans.
Congressman Billybob
DOUGLASS: May I ask your impression of the Memphis Police Department in your relations with them right after the [MLK] assassination?
You're presumably aware of whom the Memphis Public Safety Director was [in charge of the Police and Fire Depts.] at the time of the MLK murder, and where he was previously employed and who his immediate supervisor was?
Maybe prisons aught to start a "blood bank" which prisoners have to contribute to, to pay their debt to society. Have them sign away any rights to their blood, and then those contributions can then have sample taken from them and uploaded into a database.
The only thing I can think of would be that fingerprints are *external* and thereby in the public view, with a lesser expectation of privacy than a bodily internal organ, taken under duress or by force via an invasive mandatory surgical procedure.
Had the feds used a hair sample or saliva swab from inside the cheek, the logic might not have held up- or it might. There's no particular good sense in trying to fully understand the logic of crazy people.
Interesting, though,that now convicted felons have more rights than those serving in the US military. And those in the military are expected to risk and sometimes give their lives to keep it that way. Crazy.
-archy-/-
See my comments in #17, written before I saw yours. Great minds think alike, but I'm afraid my analysis and conclusion still apply.
-archy-/-
When Fort Devens closed down, there was a plan to turn the former barracks of the intel school there into a min security federal prison -- what the DOC calls a "camp." (Ultimately this didn't happen, largely because, we think, the max security prison hospital/hospice degraded the quality of the post golf course. Can't have a camp without a good eighteen holes).
These barracks had shared rooms for 2 to 4 soldiers, doors on the rooms, and were identical to the brick buildings we had across the way at 10th Group. So all they needed was some bars on the windows, right? Bzzzt. Wrong. The upshot of the whole thing, each building got $1.4 million in upgrades, to bring these barracks up to the minimum comfort standards for Federal prisoners. AC, improved heat, non-drafty windows, plumbing, etc.
Meanwhile, all across the USA, GI Joe and Jane are in pretty much similar barracks. No, not the improved jailhouse ones, the original 1950s designs.
"Soldier, I don't wanna hear any more complaining out of you. If you don't like it here you can just ETS and commit a few felonies..."
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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