Lyle Denniston recaps yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling:
Treating the solution of unsolved crimes as a legitimate part of routine police station “booking” procedures, a divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld the power of government at all levels to take DNA samples from every person legally arrested for a “serious” new crime. What a suspect may have done in the past, the Court majority ruled, is a part of the profile that police may constitutionally begin to assemble at the time of arrest for a separate offense.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a five-four majority, insisted that the ruling in the case of Maryland v. King (docket 12-207) involved little more than what happens when police take a suspect’s fingerprints or mug shot. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the dissenters, said the Court had validated the use of scientific evidence taken without a warrant not to make an identification but to gather evidence to solve cold cases — something he said the Court has never allowed before.
Lauren Kirchnem wonders, “Is the DNA-fingerprint comparison an accurate one?”:
In an age when an artist can pick up an old piece of chewing gum from the sidewalk and create a 3-D model of the gum-chewer’s face, it sounds a bit naïve.
Orin Kerr’s perspective:
It’s hugely important as a practical matter, but it’s not very interesting from a theoretical or academic standpoint. The difference between the two opinions largely hinges on how you characterize the purpose of the search. For the majority, per Justice Kennedy, taking and analyzing DNA samples upon arrest is okay because taking DNA is generally about identifying the person under arrest, which is a very important government interest and renders the search constitutional. For the dissent, per Justice Scalia, taking DNA isn’t okay in this case because it really had nothing to do with identifying the person and was just about collecting evidence of other crimes.
Doug Mataconis is uncertain about the wisdom of the ruling:
As the dissent notes, some 23,000,000 people will be arrested or one reason or another before their mid-20s. In many cases, they will be completely innocent of the charges they are arrested for. Under the Court’s logic, every single one of these people will now be required to give up a DNA sample regardless of whether there was probable cause to ask for such evidence or not.
Noah Feldman is less conflicted:
If DNA sampling was actually like fingerprinting, this argument might be convincing. But of course it isn’t. Fingerprints are a phenotype that reveals nothing except a random pattern that no two individuals share. DNA, however, is your genotype: the blueprint for your entire physical person. If the government has my fingerprints, it’s like they have my randomly assigned Social Security number. If it has my DNA, it’s like they have the entire operating system.
The Dish 