DNA a civil rights issue in court

US justice condemnes racially charged question

WASHINGTON, Feb 26, (RTRS): In a case that spotlights the growing use of genetic data by law enforcement agencies, the US Supreme Court will consider on Tuesday when a DNA sample may be taken from a suspect.

Police and prosecutors in Maryland suffered a major setback when the state’s court of appeals ruled in April 2012 that Alonzo King’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure was violated when he was required to provide his DNA upon being arrested.

Under Maryland law, samples can be taken from anyone arrested for a serious offense without police needing to get a warrant first. Police can then submit those samples to a national database to see if the suspect is linked with any other crimes.

The case being argued Tuesday focuses purely on samples taken after a suspect is arrested and charged with a crime, but not convicted of it. Samples taken from convicted felons are routinely submitted to the national database. That practice is not an issue in the case.

The sample King gave after a 2009 arrest in Wicomico County on two assault charges linked him to a 2003 rape. He was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of the rape and was convicted of one count of misdemeanor assault on the 2009 charges.

Assault

His lawyers argue that the sample taken in the assault arrest should not have been used to link him to the rape.

The nine members of the US Supreme Court will review the Maryland court ruling during a onehour oral argument.

King has received full-throated support from civil liberties groups, which are concerned that the government has too few constraints in collecting DNA.

At a minimum, police should be required to get a warrant, based on what lawyers call “individualized suspicion,” that links a suspect to a particular crime, King’s backers say. There was nothing linking King to the rape until after his DNA was taken and submitted to the database.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, a Democrat, said in an interview that the state court decision “didn’t make a whole lot of sense to us.” He described the law enforcement community in Maryland as being “apoplectic” when the ruling came out.

“The importance of DNA to law enforcement cannot and should not be lost on the justices,” Gansler said.

Gansler and his law enforcement allies make a sweeping argument about the government’s right to take DNAsamples. They insist that the act itself — which takes the form of a swab of the inside of the cheek — is reasonable, and therefore permissible, under the Fourth Amendment, even when there is no warrant.

Factors to take into account include the minimal intrusion of the search and the interest of the state in identifying and supervising suspects before trial, the state’s lawyers say.

State law enforcement groups, including the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association, filed their own brief in the case, noting that the collection of DNA from people who have been arrested “is a critical and effective modern tool.”

A ruling in favor of King would cast into doubt 27 similar state laws and a complementary federal law. Every other state in the country, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, signed on to a brief in support of Maryland.

There are multiple benefits, California Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote in the states’ brief.

The practice can help crack down on repeat offenders and prevent innocent people from being investigated as suspects, she wrote.

“These statutes make it possible for law enforcement to solve a vast amount of violent crime,” Harris said.

Also: WASHINGTON: US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday condemned racially charged language used by a federal prosecutor in Texas.

The justice, appointed to the court by President Barack Obama in 2009, took the relatively unusual step of writing a statement to accompany the nine-member Supreme Court’s announcement that it would not take up a criminal case.

Sotomayor took issue with the question asked by the prosecutor, identified in the trial transcript as Assistant US Attorney Sam Ponder.

While questioning an AfricanAmerican defendant in a drug case, Ponder asked: “You’ve got AfricanAmericans, you’ve got Hispanics, you’ve got a bag full of money. Does that tell you — a light bulb doesn’t go off in your head and say, this is a drug deal?” The first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor wrote that the prosecutor had “tapped a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our nation.”

The question was “pernicious in its attempt to substitute racial stereotype for evidence,” she added.

Sotomayor also accused the Obama administration of playing down the issue.

The defendant in the case, Bongani Charles Calhoun, wanted the Supreme Court to order a retrial because he said his right to a fair trial was violated when the question was asked.