Justice Scalia and Supreme Court's Ruling on DNA

@farmerman,

Farmerman wrote:

How can DNA sampling be avoided if there is reasonable cause to suspect a potential perp?

Your question implies a factual premise that is false. There was no probable cause in this case. The state of Maryland had arrested a certain Mr. King for one crime. Then it ran his DNA against a database of unsolved crimes, all unrelated to the crime for which it had originally arrested him. Maryland got lucky, found a match for King's DNA for one of the crimes in the database, and eventually convicted King for that crime, too. But Maryland never had probable cause to search for evidence of King's involvement in that other crime. (Its alleged justification for running his DNA was to identify him, not to follow a forensic lead.)

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The DNA could be analyzed for ancestral origins. Meaning that we would see that some people who check off "white" on a census may be more of a rainbow. It might help this society to be less balkanized. It might get some people off of their high horses, so to speak.

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@Foofie,

and then what, we fine them every time they check the wrong box?

or throw them in jail for 30 days...

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@rosborne979,

I'm concerned about both Verizon and DNA. I still don't have full convidence in the absolute value of DNA analysis. I'm thinking of the big mess in Boston, where a tech in the crime lab messed up thousands of test samples, resulting in the freeing of numerous criminals from jail.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

(Its alleged justification for running his DNA was to identify him, not to follow a forensic lead.)

Neither of us are certain on that point. He wasn't shotgun sampled, he was sampled because there was a stated reasonable suspicion,(Im not certain of what that suspicion was based upon but it was there).
The USSC decision was therefore very narrow in its pronouncement.

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@Miller,

Lab cleanups on samples can result in a number of errors , and the budgets wont cover doops.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Neither of us are certain on that point.

Speak for yourself Smile

. I am certain on that point because I've read both the decision of the court and Scalia's dissent. (PDF) That's how I know that the justification Maryland put forward for running King's DNA was that they needed to identify him as the perpetrator of a 2009 assault. Maryland did not claim it had a reasonable suspicion that he committed the 2003 rape that the database ended up matching him with. The match with the rape was just a happy coincidence.

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@rosborne979,

Me too.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

The Act serves a well-established, legitimate government interest:
the need of law enforcement officers in a safe and accurate
way to process and identify persons and possessions taken into custody.
“[P]robable cause provides legal justification for arresting a
[suspect], and for a brief period of detention to take the administrative
steps incident to arrest,” Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 113–
114; and the “validity of the search of a person incident to a lawful
arrest” is settled, United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 224. Individual
suspicion is not necessary. The “routine administrative procedure[
s] at a police station house incident

You've ascended DNA sampling by buccal swab as an UNREASONABLE SEARCH. How then do you define fingerprinting?

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@farmerman,

Im also a bit tired of lawyers having hetded us into beliving that any previous felonies of an individual do not serve relevance for a subsequent felony.

Probable cause is good enough for a search warrant or a fingerprint. Now a mouth swab is added in limited circumstances. ID GET USED TO IT!

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@InfraBlue,

That's because you have a cartoonish impression of Scalia

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@Finn dAbuzz,

As has been noted by engineer, the government can do a lot more with a DNA sample than with a fingerprint.

If you buy that the government is always benign, albeit sometimes inept, then it's not such a big deal.

There are good reasons we try hard to keep the government at bay.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

You've ascended DNA sampling by buccal swab as an UNREASONABLE SEARCH. How then do you define fingerprinting?

If it's run against a database that keys fingerprints to people's names, I'm calling it identification and have no problem with it. But if it's run against a database keying the fingerprints to every unsolved crime in the state, that's a fishing expedition. I'd call that an unreasonable search, because it would have been done without probable cause. Either way, my judgment is the same whether the key to the database is a fingerprint or a DNA sequence. Why do you keep insinuating that I treat DNA inconsistently with fingerprints?

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@Thomas,

The goal of your argument is to better define UNREASONABLE so that your point makes sense

Quote:

keying the fingerprints to every unsolved crime in the state, that's a fishing expedition. I'd call that an unreasonable search,

Well, in the limted sense of the USSC opinion , the justices in the majority disagree with you. So we can take fingerprints, we just shouldn't be allowed to stick them in a data base even with a probable cause?

Id like to see DNA technology expanded , along the lines of the opinion at hand. Your opinion seems to be that , if we develop a new technology, its use should automatically be considered a violation of the fourth amendment

This is one of the areas in which I am more conservative. The rights of victims have been gradually eroded in exchange for so many rights that weve granted perpetrators that the rules of evidence are almost impossible to follow in court prep.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Well, in the limted sense of the USSC opinion , the justices in the majority disagree with you.

Sure. If they're wrong and I'm right, as I contend they are, then of course they'll disagree with me!

farmerman wrote:

So we can take fingerprints, we just shouldn't be allowed to stick them in a data base even with a probable cause?

If you have probable cause that Person X has committed crime Y, of course the state should run X's DNA against the database entry for Y. But that's not what the state did here. Maryland had arrested King for crime Y, and then ran his DNA against the database entries for crime W, crime Z, and every other unsolved crime in the state. Maryland had no probable cause for that, and did not claim that it did. Go back to your own quote from the court's opinion: the stated purpose of the database search was King's identification, not investigations into any of those other crimes.

Farmerman wrote:

Your opinion seems to be that , if we develop a new technology, its use should automatically be considered a violation of the fourth amendment

Then you're not trying very hard to understand my opinion. My opinion is that fishing expeditions with new technologies have the same Fourth-Amendment status as fishing expeditions with old technology. Either way, fishing expeditions are unconstitutional. Despite your efforts to spin it that way, it's not about the new technology!

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@Miller,

Quote:

"The proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would not have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection." - Scalia

Did they support injustice?

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I would prefer everyone's DNA be obtained at birth, worldwide. We can then figure out what genomes result in which diseases. People can then be given a carte blanche to smoke, since their respective genome might never get cancer or heart disease?

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@Foofie,

All collected DNA will be placed into a database. It will be there for lawyers, doctors , insurance reps and others to use as they see fit.

Once the genome has been analyzed, many ( but not all ) diseases or disease states, which have a genetic basis may be detectable. With time, individuals could see their insurance premiums rise because of some of the genes they carry, especially those assoicated with severe chronic conditions.

Others may be denied admission to college, graduate school, the military because of their DNA as presented in the database.

What effect will this DNA data have on future births? Will parents be forced to abort their babies because of "errors" in the child's DNA?

Will young couples be prevented from marrying each other because of errors in their DNA if they plan on having children?

What effect will this DNA database have on future generations ( hundreds of years from now)?

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@Thomas,

Isn't that what the state does when it runs one's name through a database when, for example, it's law enforcement officers stop an individual for a traffic infringement, though?

DNA is merely another identifier, albeit much more exact than the name of an individual.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

That's because you have a cartoonish impression of Scalia

If Scalia's impression is cartoonish it's the result of his doing.

He's parroting hypocritical partisan lines.

1 Reply

Justice Scalia and Supreme Court's Ruling on DNA

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