SUNDAY ISSUE: DNA sampling

WASHINGTON A sharply divided Supreme Court this week cleared the way for police to take a DNA swab from anyone they arrest for a serious crime, endorsing a practice now followed by more than half the states as well as the federal government.

The justices differed strikingly on how big a step that was.

Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the courts five-justice majority. The ruling backed a Maryland law allowing DNA swabbing of people arrested for serious crimes.

But the four dissenting justices said the court was allowing a major change in police powers, with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia predicting the limitation to serious crimes would not last.

Make no mistake about it: Because of todays decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason, Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom. This will solve some extra crimes, to be sure. But so would taking your DNA when you fly on an airplane surely the TSA must know the identity of the flying public. For that matter, so would taking your childrens DNA when they start public school.

Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler agreed that theres nothing stopping his state from expanding DNA collection from those arrested for serious crimes to those arrested for lesser ones like shoplifting.

I dont advocate expanding the crimes for which you take DNA, but the legal analysis would be the same, Gansler said. The reason why Maryland chooses to only take DNA of violent criminals is that youre more likely to get a hit on a previous case. Shoplifters dont leave DNA behind, rapists do, and so youre much more likely to get the hit in a rape case.

Twenty-eight states and the federal government now take DNA swabs after arrests. But a Maryland court said it was illegal for that state to take Alonzo Kings DNA without approval from a judge, ruling that King had a sufficiently weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

The high courts decision reverses that ruling and reinstates Kings rape conviction, which came after police took his DNA during an unrelated arrest.

Kennedy, who is often considered the courts swing vote, wrote the decision along with conservative-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. They were joined by liberal-leaning Justice Stephen Breyer, while the dissenters were the conservative-leaning Scalia and liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

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SUNDAY ISSUE: DNA sampling