Supreme Court to Hear Fight over Taking DNA from Those Arrested
On a cold February night three years ago, police in suburban Arlington, Va., received a frantic call. A young woman said her roommate had been abducted at gunpoint by a short, clean-shaven man who sped away in a silver SUV.
At dawn, a motorist spotted the victim in a snowy field near a highway, raped and strangled, but alive. An alert officer, hearing the lookout report, recalled that he’d jotted down the license tag of a silver Dodge Durango whose driver lurked near bars at midnight, leading to the quick arrest of a short, clean-shaven Marine named Jorge Torrez.
Ten years ago, Virginia became the first state to require a mouth swab for DNA, upon arrest for a serious crime. This month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a privacy rights challenge to this common police practice. DNA samples are currently being taken nationwide from those convicted of serious crimes, while only the federal government and 28 states take samples from those arrested but not yet convicted. Victim’s rights groups, the Obama administration, and the top state attorneys from California and 48 other states have urged the court to rule in favor of routine DNA testing, saying that the mouth swab is at most, a minor invasion of privacy that has an extraordinary potential for solving heinous crimes.
Sourced from forensicmag.com
Citation:
Savage, D. Los Angeles Times . Fight over taking DNA samples after arrests goes to Supreme Court. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-dna-20130203,0,4970458.story
