It appears as though the police obtained a sample of suspect Dennis Rader’s daughter’s DNA to tie her father to the killings.
Apparently, they had obtained a warrant to get a sample of *her *DNA from medical storage (it’s theorized to have been a pap-smear or similar tissue preserved on a slide) to do the tests without her knowledge. They ran her DNA against a known DNA strand left by the killer and deduced her father was a match.
My question is, how legal is this and how likely is it that this could lead to a dismissal of all evidence collected after the DNA sample (“fruits of the search”); which I believe would set Dennis Rader free.
Can police obtain DNA from a relative’s medical records like this?
And secondly, why would they? I’ve seen a few cases where DNA was collected from the suspect simply by an undercover officer following him around and scooping up cigarette butts or old coffee cups. That I can understand. Presumably, if you throw away a cup you give up all legal right to it; the police can grab it and look at your DNA. But to go rooting around in the medical records of someone who isn’t even the suspect, but a child… I dunno, this feels weird to me.
Criminal law is not my area of practice, so I’m not sure of the ins and outs of this. However, I believe the exclusionary rule (excluding evidence obtained in violation of a person’s rights) only applies to evidence obtained in violation of the rights of the defendant. If the police obtained DNA in violation of the daughter’s rights (but not the rights of the defendant), they may well be able to use it against the defendant at trial.
This may be demonstrating rather too much faith in the legal system, but i’m assuming that the presence of a warrant suggests that the answer to your question is that, yes, such searches are legal.
Of course, it could later be found that the judge interpreted the law incorrectly in providing the warrant, in which case the results of the search might be declared inadmissible.
I don’t see anything wrong with the search at first glance. Warrants allow law enforcement to obtain information about people without their knowledge all the time (e.g., wiretaps, pen and trace registers, etc.). Not only that, any injury (assuming one exists) would be to the daughter’s constitutional rights, and as Billdo said the father does not have standing to assert the constitutional rights of another person.
I assume the same, but as you noted it wouldn’t be the first time one judge says one thing and another judge overturns it.
I can see that, and maybe now we’re getting into IMHO territory, but is it OK for police to knowingly tred on one’s constitutional rights? They didn’t violate their suspect’s rights, but it can be interpreted that they did violate the suspect’s daughter’s rights -and that’s just OK?
Don’t get me wrong here either, I’m glad it seems they’ve caught they guy and I’m all for locking the bastard up, but to me this just looks like an unecessary tactic that could put the conviction at risk.
No one’s rights were tred on here. I assume the police had probable cause to believe that the examination of the daughter’s DNA would lead to evidence of the crime. This is a pretty safe assumption, given that a judge agreed. There is no requirement that only the suspects can be searched – such a limitation would be absurd, because it would make it possible for suspects to hide evidence essentially forever as long as they had one pal. If there’s probable cause to think that a search will lead to evidence of a crime, then there’s probable cause, and a warrant may issue. (Oversimplification, of course.) Police can search whomever and wherever they want, as long as they get a warrant based on probable cause.
The only possible remedies for any violation of a non-defendant’s rights are cases against the police officers. If the police knowingly violated the daughter’s constitutional rights, they could be criminally prosecuted or sued by the daughter. Police have qualified immunity in cases where they rely on a warrant. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=475&invol=335
That means that the police cannot be successfully sued unless
In this case, it looks like the police had ample facts upon which to rely. So the search was probably fine.
A “pen register” records the telephone numbers of outgoing calls; a “trap and trace” those of incoming calls. So far as I know there’s no “pen and trace register.”
of course, it’d be interesting if he <I>wasn’t</i> her bio father, after all … but I expect that would have been established by now if that were not the case.
Even if all the evidence that police collected after obtaining the daughter’s DNA profile were to be thrown out, for many years the police have had a sample of BTK’s semen from one of the crime scenes. Other evidence linked Dennis Rader with BTK.
Good faith exception. Even if the warrant is later found to be invalid based on a judge’s error of law, the police reliance on it in good faith allows admission.