U.S. SUPREME COURT FURTHER LIMITS PRIVACY RIGHTS

Last month, the
United States Supreme Court made a ruling on a case that pitted modern law
enforcement tools versus ancient privacy rights.  In Maryland v. King, the Court held
that police can collect DNA from people arrested but not yet convicted of
serious crimes.  More than half the
states already use this procedure to assist in solving crimes.  (Georgia is not one of them).

Twenty-six states
allow for the collection of DNA from those arrested for felonies or other
serious crimes. The information is uploaded into a national database run by the
federal government in order to find matches with unsolved crimes.

That is exactly
how Alonzo Jay King was connected to a Maryland rape case for which he was
ultimately convicted.  King was arrested
in 2009 on an assault charge.  He was
then linked by DNA evidence to the 2003 rape case.

The Maryland
Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, ruling that police needed a warrant
or at least reason to suspect him of another crime before obtaining his DNA (by
way of a cheek swab). The case eventually made its way to the Supreme
Court. 

The 5-4
majority opinion upheld the DNA procedure used in Maryland.  Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority,
said "DNA identification of arrestees is a reasonable search that can be
considered part of a routine booking procedure. 
Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee's DNA is, like
fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment."

President Obama
and Congress will probably be happy with this decision.  Last year, Congress passed the Katie Sepich
Enhanced DNA Collection Act, which Obama signed in January. It creates a grant
program to help states pay for expanding their DNA collection systems.

"It's the
right thing to do," Obama said of taking DNA from arrestees in a 2010
appearance on America's Most Wanted. "This is where the national registry
becomes so important."

Justice Antonin
Scalia wrote a brilliant and pointed dissent for himself and three other
justices, charging that the decision will lead to an increased use of DNA
testing in violation of the Constitution's protection against unreasonable
searches.

Scalia said, "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," Scalia warned. "This will solve some extra
crimes, to be sure. But so would taking your DNA whenever you fly on an
airplane."

Scalia went on
to say "If you believe that a DNA search will identify someone arrested
for bank robbery, you must believe that it will identify someone arrested for
running a red light.  The proud men who
wrote the charter of our liberties would not have been so eager to open their
mouths for royal inspection."  Whew,
Scalia is certainly one of kind. 

Whether you
agree or disagree with Maryland v. King, the case seems to be destined to
be relied on by criminal defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges for the
foreseeable future.  Justice Samuel Alito
described it as being "the most important criminal procedure case that
this court has heard in decades.”

He may very
well be correct.