Has the NY legislature approved of the use of fingerprint tracing, or do the police just go out and do it because it works?
“do the police just go out and do it because it works?”
I imagine they do it because it works, and the Legislature had already given them broad license to enact practices like that one.
Your analogy is apt, because DNA testing could be considered a sort of “fingerprinting”. But it’s more than that, since it can reveal medical information that could be considered personal and private and outside the police’s purview. Maybe that’s where the judge’s reasoning about explicit legislation fits in.
This is New York, so likelier than not, as you suggest, the argument was just an excuse to treat some defendants more leniently than others.