On June 3rd, the United States Supreme Court upheld a Maryland
statute authorizing cheek swabs for the collection of DNA from persons
arrested for serious offenses. Maryland v. King, 569 U.S.
___, 133 S. Ct. 1958 (2013). In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy
reasoned that although the swab was a search under the Fourth Amendment
to the United States Constitution, the intrusion was minimal, similar to
taking a mug shot or fingerprinting, and served the substantial
government interest in learning the arrestee's full identification,
including whether the arrestee had committed crimes in the past. In the
dissent, Justice Scalia pointed out that the DNA swabs were not for
identification purposes, but were intended solely for the investigation
of other crimes.
Questions already have been raised about the internal statutory
protections in the Maryland statute, such as the disposal of DNA samples
upon acquittal or the limitations on other uses of the DNA records.
Scott Greenfield responded to those questions in his blog, Simple Justice.
Others wanted to know about the disposal of the DNA of the victims
taken to distinguish it from a suspect's DNA. What happens to the
victims' DNA? Greenfield commented on that question, too, in a later post.
A forthcoming resource on South Dakota law: University of South
Dakota School of Law Professor Christine Hutton will publish the
long-awaited second edition of Larson's South Dakota Evidence.
(This entry was originally written and posted by Marsha Stacey)
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