Ah, the old “common sense”. Instead of the possibilities that there being more than one purpose or that their stated purpose was to build another, more effective, database just as they did for fingerprints, we should rely on MOIDALIZE’s common sense.
And, in another decade or however long it takes, when DNA is used exactly how fingerprints have been used prior to this, we’ll give you a call back and see how your common sense is then.
You should rely on my common sense. I’m a sensible motherfucker.
As was pointed out above, it seems the Court danced around the issue a bit. Nothing unusual there. Why not address it directly as MOIDALIZE suggests?
When the whole issue of DNA first came up people seemed to be afraid that Big Brother was going to have all the DNA information but it is clear that the testing is limited 13 points or whatever and that “private” information (such as genetic pre-disposition to certain diseases etc.) is not obtained. Conspiracy Theorists will have you believe that’s right around the corner but I don’t believe that to be the case. With the “private medical” argument out of the picture DNA becomes no more than a high tech fingerprint. As has been pointed out, no one seemed to have a problem with using fingerprints being used to match people to crime scenes so what’s the problem with DNA? You are much more likely to get DNA at a scene than a good fingerprint.
Someone on another page suggested that you could only run DNA found on a sexual assault victim against a data base of people convicted of sexual assault. That to run it against the entire data base would be intrusive and unfair. The logic is mind boggling.
Whatever the legislature, statements by the courts or whoever say, the REAL value in taking DNA from those arrested for certain crimes is to link them to unsolved cases, both cold cases and those that will take place in the future. Not the ONLY value but the best. I don’t know of any cases where an arrested person was ID’d only on the basis of DNA. If their DNA was in the data base to match then they were also fingerprinted and those would also be in a data base.
I’m all in favor of DNA sampling for anything that a person could be fingerprinted for. The court should have just said that this no more unreasonable than fingerprinting and that using the collected data to solve crimes is OK.
The person, whose mug shot has been taken, has been seized yes but presumably for an arrestable offense and not seized on the basis or for the purpose of a mug shot. My point is taking a mug shot does not constitute as a search or seizure.
However, the fingerprints present a different scenario. The Court’s justification, more precisely a justification, to allow fingerprinting was identification of the person. They’d take the person’s prints and compare them, if necessary, to prior prints keep by law enforcement for the purpose of matching and determining identity when and where if necessary. I think the unstated premise was once the police have the fingerprints, the fingerprints are lawfully in their possession, they could do with them what they want, such as compare them to prints from crime other scenes. But the point in fingerprinting the subject arrested was identification.
If the dissent is correct in its characterization of the facts, and I do think the facts of the case support their perception, DNA collection in this case is different from fingerprinting because the DNA taken has the additional purpose of assisting in the investigation of other unsolved crimes, and thereby, constituting as evidence of a crime against the suspect.
Which raises the question you previously posed, of whether fingerprinting now is problematic when entered into a system or database for comparison purposes to unsolved but open criminal investigations.
It was one of the purposes, surely. But I think concluding that future identification was the ONLY purpose for collecting fingerprints would be as silly as concluding that the ONLY purpose for collecting DNA is to solve other cases. Both fingerprinting and DNA collection have multiple purposes.
Had Scalia’s opinion highlighted that he was only speaking of this particular case and had made a concerted effort to define the law in this area in regards to the law in question, I would be much more conflicted about the ruling. But Scalia seemed uninterested in engaging in legal analysis and more interested in taking shots at the majority.
What do you think the odds of the “using my fingerprints for anything but identification” defense working? Do you think we’ll see many courts going over the thousands of cases with fingerprint evidence comparison to arrest records and letting people go?
So, OK, say we gather a very inclusive database of DNA samples. With complete sincerity, we gather the data for identification purposes, and there it is. And someone comes along and says we would like to check this guys database against DNA collected in rape cases, see if there is a match.
Why would we be expected to say “No”?
I have a question having not read the Scalia dissent in full: is he saying that DNA is never used for identification purposes, or that in this case it’s not being used that way? Also, is he saying it is necessary the use it for the purposes of ID, or that they should ONLY use it for the purposes of ID?
I ask because I wonder how things like photos aren’t more scrutinized given that they are used by police not only for the purposes of ID, but also in unrelated lineups among other things. Or does this just come down to what is and isn’t a search?
Yes. The Fourth Amendment is implicated only where there is a search or seizure. Similarly, the Fifth is implicated only when a statement or demand for production is testimonial in nature.
I can see the rationale for fingerprinting as an identification system. Photography or other identification systems that exists before fingerprinting were difficult and unreliable.
But why do we need DNA identification? We have an established system of fingerprinting now. What it the problem with fingerprints as a form of identification that DNA is supposed to address? Have people been using fake fingerprints at their arrest? Have there been cases where two people have the same fingerprints?
Criminals watch tv and wear gloves. 
I watch The First 48 regularly (real homicide cops working cases). They rarely get fingerprints that quickly solves the case at crime scenes. But every once in awhile they get a suspect from fingerprints.
Hiding DNA seems impossible. Hair, saliva, skin all leave it behind.
I can all but guarantee you that almost every single defense attorney, when faced with a question of the identity of an arrestee, will argue that fingerprints are all well and good, but DNA has been proven better. Why didn’t the government use DNA in this case? What are they hiding? What are they afraid of? In almost every single case where there is some kind of physical evidence found and DNA is not done, you can bet that the jury will hear about it.
And, as I quoted from the opinion earlier in the thread: “DNA identification is an advanced technique superior to fingerprinting in many ways, so much so that to insist on fingerprints as the norm would make little sense to either the forensic expert or a layperson. The additional intrusion upon the arrestee’s privacy beyond that associated with fingerprinting is not significant, see Part V, infra, and DNA is a markedly more accurate form of identifying arrestees. A suspect who has changed his facial features to evade photographic identification or even one who has undertaken the more arduous task of altering his fingerprints cannot escape the revealing power of his DNA.”
And I’m sure if the case somehow involved homosexuals or unenumerated rights, Scalia would have been one of the first to state that the judiciary shouldn’t be deciding what the wisest way to identify criminals and instead should defer to the legislature.
You imply a certain Scalia-ness, as existential essence of cramped asshole, that makes his judicial opinions predictable?
This, and every post Hamlet has made thus far, nails it. There seems to be an assumption that the justifiction of DNA databases for identification is a sham because fingerprints are always easily sufficient to easily identify defendants and to link them to their current and prior offenses. If it’s actually ever been your job to do that, you know that’s simply not true. Records degrade due to human error like bad fingerprinting and to things like the only available fingerprint card linking an individual to a criminal record being an archived 30 year old seventh generation Xerox smudge of what may have once been a fingerprint. Every experienced criminal prosecutor in the United States has tried cases where they had to prove prior offenses with fingerprints so poorly taken or so poorly preserved with crappy recordkeeping that it was necessary to prove the defendant’s priors by tattoos, scars, mugshots, nicknames, or other dicey methods in the absence of good prints. With that problem persistantly staring prosecutors in the face, how can you not justify a modernized backup system of identification that DNA collection clears up easily? Once that system is legitimately in place, why shouldn’t it be used exactly like IAFIS is with fingerprints to identify unknown rapists and murderers?
I’m talking identification in the literal sense. Establishing who a person is, not establishing they committed a crime.
Let’s say John Smith gets arrested for a traffic ticket and fingerprinted. He then gets released with a court appearance date. He shows up at his court appearance, is convicted, and sentenced to thirty days in jail.
How do you know that this guy is the same guy that was arrested? What if John Smith paid somebody to pretend to be him and do his thirty day sentence?
The simple answer is you fingerprint him as he enters the county jail and check to see if his fingerprints match those of the guy who had been arrested. If the fingerprints match, you know you have the same person. If they don’t match, you know you have a different person. It’s a simple and clear system of positive identification.
What is DNA collection going to add to this? At most, it’s a redundant system that accomplishes the same thing as fingerprints except at greater expense and less convenience. No legal system is going to have DNA collection replace fingerprints as the primary means of identification.
But they will. That’s one of the reasons why 28 states have this kind of legislation. Let’s remember that it took fingerprinting almost 100 years to go from being used in prison to identify inmates in New York to having an easily searchable database (that, as pravik pointed out, is anything but infallible). DNA testing is going to, eventually, do the same thing, but with more even accuracy. States realize this, hell, the model is already there. So they’ve been starting the system that will eventually take over for fingerprints.
It seems to me even Scalia’s dissent recognizes the problem by writing his dissent in such a way that his argument would be irrelevant once the technology of DNA identification catches up with fingerprinting (and completely dodging the issue of the collection of fingerprinting before it could be easily searchable). Right at this moment, it isn’t possible to, but most knowledgeable people seem to think it will be, and relatively soon. I don’t see how it is unconstitutional to start to create a system that will do the same thing that fingerprinting currently is, but only better.
To be arrested, that is, transported to a jail for booking requires breaking the law, unless we are talking about a Material Witness arrest.
You’re the law buff and I’m not, but YogSosoth said a couple of times he’s OK with this in the case of detentions as well. Does being detained also require breaking the law?
In the field detention only requires a “reasonable suspicion” an offense has been committed, but can include probable cause, yes.
Once a Terry stop has been made, after an investigation/questioning, the officer may conclude no law was actually broken, depends.
I might add there are so called “traffic arrest’s”, placing a person in back of a police car, those generally reqire PC, but safety issues are a factor also.
What? It requires probable cause that the arrestee has broken the law.
This is true “innocent until proven guilty”.