As my buddy Guido quipped, why stop with a gun registry when you can just register all the people?
Sorry. But I’m with the liberals — and Scalia — on this one. I don’t trust agents of the state. Who, for instance, are now empowered to arrest people falsely (see my first post this morning: a theme emerges!) and legally obtain their DNA:
In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority’s reasoning established a “terrifying principle.”
“The court’s opinion barely mentions the crucial fact about this case: the search here was entirely suspicionless. The police had no reason to believe King’s DNA would link him to any crime.”
Scalia added the state law “manages to burden uniquely the sole group for whom the Fourth Amendment’s protections ought to be most jealously guarded: people who are innocent of the state’s accusations,” describing of the legal concept of innocent until proven guilty.
He was supported by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Scalia’s prior support of Fourth Amendment protections is well-documented, so his siding with three more liberal members of the court was not surprising.
As long-time readers here know, I tend to find myself aligned most closely on the Bench to Clarence Thomas.
I haven’t read the majority opinion yet, but at first blush I honestly can’t see any room for debate here. Thomas (and even Roberts, I suppose, when he isn’t using the Court as an attempt at bipartisan healing) tends to rule from a libertarian federalist slant. Even so, this case seems to me to go to a fundamental 4th amendment right that no state laws can circumvent, and so any deference to state law here is problematic.
Wait.
They ruled that just being brought in gives them the right to take a swab?
Oh hells no!
Fingerprints are an external manifestation of your presence at a scene: DNA is your entire life.
The headline delivers a visceral negative reaction, but on further thought, I’m confounded by the question; really, what’s the difference between a DNA swab and fingerprinting, which is routinely done at arrest?
Fingerprints can’t help track down your offspring.
It’s just a temporary reprieve, but my understanding is that the law enforcement DNA filings show certain genetic markers for purposes of identifying perps. What I’ve been told is that it isn’t medically valuable.
I’m against it regardless, and the distinction isn’t legally excepted. At the point where medical quality DNA information is the issue, this ruling will have already cleared it.
As some people have pointed out, though, Obamacare medical record practices will probably put your DNA on file before you are ever likely to be arrested and swabbed.
Well, having skimmed the thing, Scalia swayed me on the last page of his dissent.
The only people that this decision will affect is those acquitted of the crime of arrest.
DNA registration will be an Obamacare requirement. Just wait, it will happen.
Will we be issued spiffy collars on which to wear our registration tags, along with our vaccination tags and maybe a nice “if found outside please call” tag in case one of us digs out under the fence?
I have to admit, that’s more inviting than being branded and having a tag stapled to my ear…
I imagine soon DNA will be a requirement everywhere fingerprints are now, drivers licenses, passports, contracts requiring notary’s, certain jobs, attending public schools, social security cards, etc.
McGehee, I’m expecting a bar code tattoo somewhere…hopefully not on our forehead or right hand.
will the microchip insertion be covered under barackycare?
The name habeas corpus may need re-writing, if the translation “you have a body” falls by the wayside as
“your”the body passes into the ownership of other hands.“what’s the difference between a DNA swab and fingerprinting”
The swab has enough dna to be, (threoretically), placed at a crime scene. The question you should be asking yourself at this point is; Do I trust the police with actual unique physical evidence from my body?
“I have to admit, that’s more inviting than being branded and having a tag stapled to my ear…”
Or a tatooed number on your forearm.
And of course the obligitory; “Our labs never make mistakes.”
The placement of The Mark of the Beast is not relevant, once it’s there.
I hadn’t really thought along those lines, but it doesn’t take much to build a DNA profile these days. I think they’re at the point where a drop of sweat is enough.
I dig it cranky, I just said that to make a point, which you got…
I can see defense lawyers adding, “In what form was the DNA found at the crime scene, officer?” to their battery of cross examination questions. Having to answer, “The accused left DNA in the form of cells from the inside of his cheek” leads to amusing follow-ups opining just how somebody happens to rub the inside of their mouth against something and no other part of their body.
I do understand your point, however. I’m not of a mind to trust the agency charged with finding “somebody” with a pool of handy “guilty parties” to choose from.
And that big, over-friendly tattooed guy they stuck you in a cell with?
Stool sample.
Mitochondrial DNA can be, (and has been), extracted from a single hair strand, (no root necessary). A lower level of probability, but still accepted in many jurisdictions.
“In what form was the DNA found at the crime scene, officer?”
Typically trace evidence is collected by technicians at scenes and at post mortems. No long stretch of imagination to take the swab and wipe the fingernails of the deceased.
According to the DC Comics storyline behind “Batman Beyond,” a government agency was able to clone Bruce Wayne from stray DNA samples he left while apprehending bad guys.
Probable? Who knows?
Possible? Absolutely.
No great difficulty to convince a jury, “The victim might very well have reached inside his attacker’s mouth for that very purpose. It’s common knowledge that we use DNA evidence to solve crimes.”
DNA can be retrieved from any items, especially clothing, collected as evidence at a crime scene even decades later. See the many television shows regarding Cold Cases and the solving thereof. There is no logical reason to collect the DNA of all who are arrested, regardless of the crime.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with law enforcement and everything to do with getting us to learn to be better cattle. I hope the many Innocence Projects across the country raise a real hue and cry about this.
I hope the many Innocence Projects across the country raise a real hue and cry about this.
Why? Our ‘betters’ have spoken.
Fuck our Betters and the oxen they rode in on.
We need a better class of Betters.
What I’ve been told is that it isn’t medically valuable.
YET
Rewatch GATTACA and get back to me.
we need a better ruining class
dicentra says June 3, 2013 at 1:19 pm
YET
I fully acknowledge that, but I’m thinking the electronic medical records will get us before the cops will.
“No great difficulty to convince a jury, “The victim might very well have reached inside his attacker’s mouth for that very purpose. It’s common knowledge that we use DNA evidence to solve crimes.”
Hah.
“We need a better class of Betters.”
Double Hah.
Thanks, Dicentra, my first thought was Gattaca, too.
Not everything has to be in one place in the same time, it just all has to make it into the system eventually(maybe that brand-spanking new data center in Utah?). They’ll have everyone’s medical records with ObamaCare, they’re getting access to email and internet activity, now DNA, maybe next a gun registry, financial data, trackers in our cars so that they can assess mileage taxes (and record travel), and on and on. I didn’t used to fear government snooping, but this is all too much from so many different angles.
It seems to me that while identification-specific DNA configurations might not contain medical information, categories of such configurations can be established and then data — economic, educational, criminal, medical, etc. — from other sources could be correlated with those categories. This might then be used to underpin assumptions regarding an individual — assumptions that could be used in any number of ways.
It’s good science being used in a bad way. DNA can be used to exclude you or your children (or future children) from certain insurances due to the likelihood of developing expensive diseases, a propensity to substance abuse, et al., as well as being used for genetic manipulation.
The criminal justice system and the TSA among others, are simply not sophisticated enough to have this amount of data sitting around in the hands of amateurs and the modestly trained. Sequencing an entire DNA profile is still very expensive, so what are they looking for and why? These are good questions our stupid Justices needed to ask and didn’t.
I have no faith in the accurate analysis & use of citizens’ DNA by a government that has wasted billions of dollars trying to solve Anthropogenic Global Warming, especially when they helped massage the data that supposedly proves the existence of AGW in the first place.
And this DNA database will eventually be too irresistible to the people who already feel entitled to tell me what I can eat and what medical treatment I deserve.
So now they can take DNA when they give you a traffic ticket? When the officer starts writing the ticket out you are technically under (non-custodial) arrest.
I notice that they use the word booking which would imply custodial arrest but a quick scan doesn’t specify what kind of arrest grants the right to DNA.
“please sign here acknowledging that you need to appear in court on xx, oh and I’ll need a check swab”
arrrgh, cheek swab
ccs, I’m going out on a limb and postulating what this means is in any arrest situation where fingerprints would normally be taken, you will also now be required to open up and say “ahhhh”.
You aren’t fingerprinted for a traffic ticket.
I can see be required to give DNA for a drivers license real soon though…
I would also guess that it would be in a booking (prints, pictures) situation also. That said, it doesn’t seem to specify, and you know, government creep…
What if you refuse to have your cheek swabbed? Do they wrestle you to the floor and force your mouth open? You don’t have to give blood for a blood alcohol test if you refuse it.
That’s an interesting question leigh, soon to be answered I’m sure.
I’m sure it will be something catch all, Lee. You know, freezing all your bank accounts and credit cards and impounding your vehicles.
The usual.
http://www.mulrooneycraghill.com/what-happens-if-the-police-arrest-you/
Well. I’ll have to keep my life on the straight and narrow.
Thanks, mondamay.
I was wondering about it myself. I figured I may as well share.
Ditto on the keeping out of trouble thing.
“Well. I’ll have to keep my life on the straight and narrow.”
In all sincerity; good luck with that.
civil rights ain’t a black thing no more
In all sincerity; good luck with that.
It’s a struggle sometimes, Gulermo. I’ve become more patient as I’ve gotten older, though.
The problem is you are already breaking many laws, leigh, laws you don’t even know about. It’s just a question of when the government goons come to enforce them.
*sigh* I know, Cranky. I tear the tags off that say “do not remove under penalty of law” all the time.
Thinking of the cops as jackbooted thugs really pisses me off. It’s probably a good thing I know a lot of lawyers.
Never mind the 4th amendment, kinda goes against the 5th about keeping your mouth shut too, seems to me.
I’m thinking the time for shooting draws ever closer.
Civil rights? Go ahead, you may as well take them, I guess I wasn’t using them anyway…
/sarc
Ok, people, at what point in a criminal investigation is it permissible to take a DNA sample?
When it’s relevant to the charge (and the person has actually been charged), or, if the accusation doesn’t involve DNA, when the person is convicted of a felony.
Other than that, no.
at the point where they have DNA what they want to see if yours matches cause of they have a reasonable suspicion
but if it doesn’t match the fascists shouldn’t get to throw you into an obscene fascist “department of justice” database where america’s piggy piggy union whore bitchcops have access to it
I other words, if you are charged with rape, and they have DNA, then test away, if they don’t have DNA, they can’t take it until you are convicted of the crime by the evidence they do have.
I
E.G. … real case from my office
Youngster (about 4 or 5) tells mom that uncle X unzipped his pants and put his privates in her underwear.
Mom takes kid to ER, rape kit indicates abrasions but no penetration. Initial test on underpants shows positive for semen.
Uncle X interviewed admits having kid in car with him alone evening prior to reporting (large family gathering).
X is arrested … direct testimony (kid), admission of opportunity and circumstantial evidence more than probable cause.
X is cheekswabbed at booking. Cannot make bail. Maintains innocence.
Agency pushes to have DNA test prioritized.
Four months later … SURPRISE the semen is NOT A MATCH to DNA.
Charges dropped; motion for finding of factual innocence made & granted
Now, if this guy was NOT cheekswabbed after arrest how much longer would he have been sitting in jail awaiting trial?
I’m really torn on this since DNA exonerates as well as convicts. Where in the process is that line where it becomes just an investigatory tool like fingerprints?
Oops…
Innocent people shouldn’t have their DNA in a database, period.
I think that was a legitimate test, because they had evidence relevant to the charge to compare it to.
They damn sure better not put his DNA in a database after it didn’t match though.
Lee
I have been fingerprinted several times …. worked at a Savings & Loan, worked for a Defense Contractor, District attorney’s office and Probation.
Should mine be wiped out of the databases because I’m innocent?
yes your prints should be wiped after a certain amount of time
Do you think fingerprinting is equal to DNA testing? I dunno.
Also, those were voluntary instances you described, you didn’t have to apply for those jobs. People are falsely accused of crimes all the time though.
Say you are accused of a hit and run non-injury car accident that you’re innocent of, and there is no DNA involved in any way. think they should swab you when they arrest you? They will fingerprint you, the pretext being for ID purposes, but taking DNA isn’t about that, it would be nothing but a fishing expedition against your 5th amendment rights, seems to me.
What I heard (on ABC Nightly News) is that they can take your DNA without a warrant in the case of a felony arrest (whatever that is).
I’m really torn on this since DNA exonerates as well as convicts.
Then if they ask for a swab, you say yes. You could always say yes.
SCOTUS just said you can’t say no.
Which means it is not a choice, Mr. Hobson.
I believe what SCOTUS said was, if the state has a law, regulation or (ahem) procedure requiring DNA sample upon arrest, that is constitutional.
Nothing says a state can’t pass a law saying, “Um, y’know what? We’re going to be a little less aggressive than SCOTUS allows.”
In those states you will be able to say No — but only in those states.
the case of a felony arrest (whatever that is).
The police must have probable cause to arrest on specific charges. If those are felony charges (e.g. rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery, murder), then it’s a felony arrest.
Reports are forwarded to DA office, who then review the case and make a filing, if any.
Sometimes felony arrests are filed as misdemeanors or turned down altogether. Sometimes misdemeanors are filed as felonies (someone arrested on a misdemeanor, then rap is run and a discovery is made that the person has priors or other outstanding warrants)
Do you think fingerprinting is equal to DNA testing? I dunno.
In many ways, yeah. It’s a unique identifier you spread all over the place equivalent to fingerprints.
Occasionally, I get reports from my agencies that rape kits are getting ready to expire (10 years). The office then must pull the incident reports and see if other evidence supports filing a John Doe warrant. The DNA from the rape kit is then in the system in case of a future match — say a someone arrested for burglary whose DNA is collected and run through the system.
Do we wait until the defendant is convicted of burglary? Or do we collect at arrest, run it for any matches, then destroy it if person is acquitted of the burglary?
of course it costs our broke-dick failshit government about 20-60 times what it should to produce a “database” for the FBI thugpuppets what doesn’t work anyway, so maybe fears are overblown at this point
I doubt the evidence would ever be destroyed on acquittal. The government likes having information it might want to use later.
“Do we wait until the defendant is convicted of burglary? Or do we collect at arrest, run it for any matches, then destroy it if person is acquitted of the burglary?”
If you read Scalia’s dissent in the ruling, DNA was previously taken on conviction, in the case in question, DNA was taken at arrest, which is why it was contested.
Scalia points out that in that case, it ultimately didn’t matter anyway since King was convicted, so his DNA would have been taken anyway. So the only people this ruling affects are the people that are ultimately acquitted…the innocent.
Now, why would our benevolent government want to change the rules to affect only the innocent?
If I’m not being clear, in your burglar example, the only way this ruling to swab at arrest changes anything is if he was innocent of burglary. He may be guilty of something else that a DNA test would reveal, but he was arrested and charged with burglary, so the swab is just a fishing expedition, which is surely a due process violation.
With your consent. You can say no. If you say no, there are consequences, but that’s your choice.
Same applies for mandatory drug testing. It’s a condition for employment, but you can say no.
“do we collect at arrest, run it for any matches…”
Matches for what, other unrelated crimes you mean?
If that’s the case, why wait for the pretext of an arrest? Just swab everybody and be done with it.
Yes, that.
I mean, if arrest is pretext for cross-referencing, why not toss their place of living and car while you’re at it, just in case they have some drugs or a dead body or two?
I get why people want to do this DNA-checking, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we are all on file within the next decade or two. But for now, it looks just like any other government intrusiveness to me.
I’m never giving blood again. Talk about a gold mine for DNA profiling.
Darleen respectfully, I am not interested in “helping” the police do their job. It’s not going to be a police officer who does this swabbing, it’s going to be a jailer who has little more training than watching a 20 minute video in a roomful of other jailers who also aren’t paying attention and then signing off that they have watched it and understand what they saw. If it’s like every other boiler-plate video instead of actual human explaining it, no one is watching it and they are catching up on gossip.
Treating the citizenry as potential criminal offenders is wrong. Forcing a person who is cooling their heels at County and waiting to make bond to give a DNA swab “just in case” is bullshit. This is a golden opportunity to close cold cases and ruin peoples lives forever. It happens. We both know it does.
Should I ever find myself in such a situation, God forbid, they aren’t getting my DNA without a fight.
Before computerized database checking, fingerprints would only be really useful if you had some reason to suspect a certain person was involved in a new or old crime then their fingerprints would/could be hand checked against the ones taken from a crime scene.
Now with fingerprints computerized in a database all prints in the database can be checked against those in a old cold or brand new case. So too with DNA which came in around the same time that the computer databases did.
The civil rights problems aren’t with the taking and sequencing of DNA upon arrest anymore than the taking of fingerprints. The questions revolve around the ability to enter them digitally into a database that can be searched by governmental entities all over the world looking for “matches” from the far past and forever into the future.
“Matches” which for both may be false-positives and false-negatives due to limitations in the collection of the samples and of how they are made into digital form which is what is entered in the database.
My own preference is that they may take these samples to use in the particular case being investigated but none of them should be entered into the overall database except for those of the person[s] convicted of a felony. Even that is giving some leeway since “felony” has been defined down quite a bit from what people think it is.
I am going to be more worried about this when it becomes fast and cheap to do a DNA profile on someone. I think it’s still slow and expensive, though, although I might be behind the times.
Consider what might happen to your blood samples under HIPAA. Some might get set aside for “patient identification and classification”.
That’s not me quoting anyone; that’s me imagining what they’ll call it.
Darleen says June 3, 2013 at 10:33 pm
X is arrested … direct testimony (kid), admission of opportunity and circumstantial evidence more than probable cause.
X is cheekswabbed at booking. Cannot make bail. Maintains innocence.
Agency pushes to have DNA test prioritized.
Four months later … SURPRISE the semen is NOT A MATCH to DNA.
Charges dropped; motion for finding of factual innocence made & granted
Now, if this guy was NOT cheekswabbed after arrest how much longer would he have been sitting in jail awaiting trial?
I’m really torn on this since DNA exonerates as well as convicts. Where in the process is that line where it becomes just an investigatory tool like fingerprints?
If someone wants to volunteer their DNA as an effort to help exonerate themselves, they should have the option of doing so. This ruling makes it mandatory whether the arrested person consents or not.
This is very, very different from fingerprints. Let me construct a hypothetical for you which illustrates the difference.
Assume arguendo that at some point in the past, my brother had committed a rape, and trace DNA evidence from him is now cataloged and sitting in an “unsolved crimes” database right now. Assume further that he’s never arrested for this or any other crime.
Many years later, I might be out exercising my civil rights protesting some of the current governmental outrages, and I’m arrested and hauled in on charges of resisting arrest and assault upon a police officer.
It doesn’t matter whether I’m innocent and the charges are puffery or trumped-up… this ruling says that my DNA can be taken from me whether I consent or not, and that sample will be used to go on a fishing expedition through the “unsolved crimes” database, looking to see if there is any history of me having committed other crimes utterly unrelated in any way, shape, manner or form to my current arrest.
And lo and behold, the database spits out that it thinks I was the one who committed that rape.
I might have no idea whatsoever what my brother might have done in the past, and he might be dead by that point or long ago left the country. I’m now left in the situation of being accused of a crime that I didn’t commit precisely because the police used a DNA database to go on a fishing expedition, with the illusion of the “compelling evidence” of science being marshalled against me.
The Constitution is supposed to help protect against these sorts of fishing expeditions.
Fingerprint databases don’t allow me to be mistaken for my brother. DNA evidence most definitely does. My brother’s fingerprints left somewhere can’t accidentally end up pointing an accusatory finger at me when I am fingerprinted.
I’ve lived in Colorado for nearly forty years now… and my state now bears very little resemblance to what it was back then. Not physically, mind you… but politically, culturally, ethically.
I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the same can be said for the entire country of which I have been a life-long citizen by birth.
I didn’t leave my state, or my country. They left me.
David Bowie had it right. This is not America.
A relevant article from 2008 which illustrates that my hypothetical might not be that unlikely:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20