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SCOTUS Says DNA Collection Permissible After Arrest
schwit1 writes in with news about a ruling on the legality of the police collecting your DNA after an arrest. "A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday said police can routinely take DNA from people they arrest, equating a DNA cheek swab to other common jailhouse procedures like fingerprinting. '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. But the four dissenting justices said that the court was allowing a major change in police powers. '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,' conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom. Details of ruling available here.
Then I was shocked to see Scalia was in the dissenting group.
I don't see the difference between this and finger printing. If you are going to do either and the person is not found guilty that stuff should all be tossed out.
"Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. "
On no other issue will Scalia, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan all agree with each other.
sudo make me a sandwich
For once the UK leads the USA in the long, slow slide to a police state. They take them from kids a lot
Same restitution you get for having your finger prints & mug shot taken against your will.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Doesn't matter. This gives police license to run dragnets for DNA.
They can't solve a case but have DNA and a vague description, they will simply "arrest" anyone and everyone who is a close match to the description on trumped up charges that will be dropped after they get their DNA.
No matter where you go, there you are.
The problem here isn't so much with the collection of DNA, but the retention. That seems to be a common theme here at the start of the 21st century - data collected for one purpose is then reused for other purposes.
I think it is reasonable for the police to check if someone they've arrested is a convicted felon. But once they've looked you up in their database of convicts, the collected data should be destroyed, be it DNA, fingerprints or even a mugshot. If you are subsequently convicted, they can go and re-collect the data for the purposes of making a permanent entry into the database of convicts.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
FWIW, california has been doing this for years.. If you are arrested (for anything-- political protest, for example), they will collect your DNA. This information remain in the state database, whether you are convicted or not-- even if you are not even charged. I'm trying to figure out if there's a consistent procedure to get your DNA removed if you're wrongly arrested, but can't find anything from a quick google. I only see a discussion of how it should work (A judge gets to decide) not how it's worked in practice.
FWIW, the CA public VOTED for this in 2004. 62% to 38%.
Using this sort of logic is not getting you any converts.
Very few liberals believe that and you know it. Such arguments are just driving people away from every agreeing with you.
I disagree with the likening of DNA to having a mug shot taken or a fingerprint.. Simply because DNA can be used for purposes well beyond what you can use for a mug shot or a fingerprint.. Consider for a moment this currently fictional example... We have a nationalized health care system. Using the same DNA collected we tax an individual based on the likeliness of that individual to contract a certain condition (e.g. diabetes).. -or- We use that same DNA to establish life insurance rates along the same logic.. The problem here is it allows a very large amount of information to be garnered about a persons potential medical conditions without their consent.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
Now, like fingerprints, once charges are dropped, all such collected evidence should be destroyed.
That is NOT what happens with fingerprints. They are kept as permanent records. In some states, you may petition the court to have them expunged after an acquittal, but very few people do that, and it certainly isn't the default.
There are things in America that both parties hold in absolute agreement:
1) That we don't want a police state, dictatorship, or anything like it
2) The sneaky suspicion that the 'other party' is trying to push us towards exactly that.
It's kind of hilarious, actually.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
think more broadly. studies may show a person with certain sequences might be more likely to commit certain crimes. We need to keep extra surveillance on such people for safety's sake.
And maybe you shouldn't reproduce, citizen, given your suspicious DNA sequences.
They can't solve a case but have DNA and a vague description, they will simply "arrest" anyone and everyone who is a close match to the description on trumped up charges that will be dropped after they get their DNA.
Actually, the opinion requires the arrest to be for a serious offense. So littering or seatbelt violations are not going to cut it.
For comparison, the Maryland law at issue here essentially limits the DNA testing to arrests for crimes of violence: murder, rape, robbery, assault. These are not victimless crimes and so are much harder to trump up -- you need to find putative victims in order to be credible.
This is only potentially bad because of the way how people have now completely misunderstood the purpose of DNA fingerprinting.
DNA Fingerprinting was originally conceived to exclude suspects and was never intended to prove that a suspect was present.
(let that sink in for a bit)
(a bit longer)
This is why DNA fingerprinting is usually combined with probabilities with regard to how many other people share the similar DNA fingerprint match.
A DNA fingerprint match should not be considered proof of anyone's guilt. It only means that the suspect cannot be excluded.
However, in America, it seems that DNA fingerprint match is seen as proof of guilt instead of how it should be used where a fingerprint mismatch is proof of innocence. Far too often, I have heard of cases where the prosecution excludes DNA fingerprint evidence because it doesn't show a match ... which is an abuse and misrepresentation of the technology.
*sigh*
(I'm sure that many people will read what I had written and still completely fail to understand the difference)
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Being detained is not the same as being arrested.
-Bill
Bullshit. To myth24601 as well. I'll address his/her point first.
Charges rarely get "dropped". Cases simply don't get pressed. Felony arrests can be prosecuted up to five years later in many places (WA, for one), once sufficient evidence is obtained to make a case. The constitutional prohibition against being placed in double jeapardy means prosecutors only get one kick at the can, unless the same evidence can be repackged under a different charge.
In 2010, when my ex had custody, my son was hungry. As she hardly ever fed our kids, she let me take him to dinner, and wrote a permission slip (as I did not have visitation rights that day, and insisted on one). Well, she let the poor kid out, in February, with one shoe having the sole completely flop off. I told him, either before or after dinner, I'd get him new shows. He chose after dinner. Well, after dinner, he wanted to go home to mom, and I feared she'd have police waiting to illustrate the "poor footwear" that "I" had on him. So, I took him to Payless for those shoes first.
My son has issues. He suffers from Conduct Disorder (Oppositional Defiant Disorder in his younger days, that psychologists and psychiatrists have not been able to stem). In order for him to not run into traffic, I had to carry him into the store, all the while him screaming "He's choking me! He's killing me! Help, he's kidnapping me!" I handed a worker one shoe, asked, for a matching pair, got them paid, and took him home to his mother. Unbeknownst to me, on the way, he brusied himself with his seatbelt buckle.
He alleged I struck him, she called police, they interviewed store staff ("He was choking and trying to kill the child he was kidnapping"), and there was plenty of probable cause to arrest me for felony assault of a minor. I spent four days in jail before being able to post bail. Getting to one's own money behind bars is surprisingly difficult: banks won't release it to attorneys without a notarized power of attorney, and while your lawyer can visit you in lockup, a notary might be made to wait weeks. Lawyers are generally not permitted for front bail monies, because the offer can be used as a incentive to force an attorney-client relationship under duress.
Well, the case against me fell apart: he refused to testify, and his mental illness came to light.
Were the charges dropped?
No.
I got custody of my kids 18 months later, but to remove the uncertainty of a possible felony prosecution over the next 3-1/2 years, I had to get the original charges disposed. Despite not prosecuting me, the DA refused to drop the charges unless I pled to "something". I chose disorderly conduct (as someone might have thought I was actually kidnapping my son, and assaulted me: in WA, acting in a manner that might invite assault is disorderly conduct), and paid a $1200 fine. The original charges were disposed.
All this is public information. I could not hire a nanny for my son through nannies4hire.com because of my arrest record. But, and this addresses the AC: I had no trouble getting a new job some years later. Decent employers research things like this.
In Liberty, Rene
I have a different sort of idea about that:
1. Almost all people with no power, don't want a police state, dictatorship, etc because they know it will oppress them.
2. Almost all people with power would rather like a police state or dictatorship, because that allows them to keep their power.
3. Those people without power who have chosen to identify with or support a subgroup of those people with power have to square their opposition to police states with their decision to support their chosen subgroup. That leads to the "My party isn't oppressing me, the other party is oppressing me!" thinking from self-identified partisans.
The real blindness is this, which came out in a conversation between myself (borderline socialist), a moderately liberal friend, and a libertarian friend: Which person in your life is most likely to be oppressing you in some way? Answer: Your boss.
I am officially gone from
You are wrong. Not only did Scalia vote against this, he authored a scathing dissent of the decision -- while Bryer, one of the Court's liberals, voted for it along with the Court's conservative Justices. And it's absolutely beyond question that Martin O'Malley, a diehard liberal who supports issues such as granting in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants and denying law-abiding Marylanders the right to carry concealed firearms (another MD case soon bound for the Supreme Court), has advanced and expanded this database as part of his agenda for over a decade.
Sorry but conflating Marxism to American liberalism is complete baloney.
The roots of liberalism are (from the Wikipedia article on the same topic) in the Enlightenment.
"Liberalism first became a distinct political movement during the Age of Enlightenment, when it became popular among philosophers and economists in the Western world. Liberalism rejected the notions, common at the time, of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The 17th century philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition. Locke argued that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property and according to the social contract, governments must not violate these rights. Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and sought to replace absolutism in government with democracy and/or republicanism and the rule of law.
The revolutionaries of the American Revolution, segments of the French Revolution, and other liberal revolutionaries from that time used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of what they saw as tyrannical rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Spanish America, and North America. In this period, the dominant ideological opponent of liberalism was classical conservatism.
Later 20th century liberalism evolved into social liberalism where social justice and a mixed economy are needed to limit the gap between the rich and the poor. The trust busting of the early 20th century and the formation of labor unions are typical modern liberal activities.
Marxism is based on the idea of complete collectivism, no private ownership of capital, and no right of property, which are very different from any form of liberalism.
I'm really amused by all the ideological civil libertarians who are shocked (SHOCKED I tell you!) at finding common cause with Scalia on this issue. The general assumption seems to be that Scalia "is finally right for once." Here's an alternative explanation: Scalia hasn't changed at all. It's the ideologically motivated civil libertarians who are off their rockers here.
If you'll tie your jerking knee down for a minute and whip up a Top 20 list of the most pernicious and chilling abuses of government authority, I suspect you'll have a hard time finding a spot for this line item. The risk/benefit equation on this is different. Managing this data in an appropriate and accountable fashion is officially Not Rocket Science. You may not trust the government to behave in a reasonable and appropriate manner, but there's all kinds of stuff you accept silently right now which is already egregious. Letting that stuff slide (Guantanomo, CIA-run drone strikes against civilian targets, National Security Letters, good old fashioned "driving while black", take your pick) while getting your panties in a bunch over soemthing with tangible benefits to a civil society is not much more than masturbatory paranoia.
Or maybe I should put it this way: When extremists of different factions agree, it doesn't make them less extreme.
Yes it is. "Being detained" is something they made up to get around your rights*. If you are not free to go, you are under arrest.
Just look at the definition. In a non legal sense, arrest means "1. To stop" That's exactly what detain(1. To keep from proceeding) means. Same thing.
In a legal sense, arrest means "2. To seize and hold under the authority of law." If a police officer has told you that you are not free to go, then he has siezed you under the authority of law.
Detention is arrest. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar who is trying to trick you out of your rights. That includes members of the SCOTUS.
*They do this trick a lot. You have legal rights granted under civil and criminal law... but they made up "administrative" law where you have no such protections. There are legal rights granted to civilians and to soldiers... but they made up "enemy combatants" who have no such protections. It's the oldest trick in the book, don't fall for it.
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