Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!


Contact
Ace:
aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck:
buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD:
cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix:
mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum:
petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton:
sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com


Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« "Conservative" Amnesty Supporter Jen Rubin: We Need Amnesty Because US Wages are "Artificially High" | Main | House Subcommittee on Appropriations Begins Hearings on IRS »
June 03, 2013

Supreme Court: Taking DNA Just Like Taking Fingerprints; Police May Take Every Arrestee's DNA

This might not all that bad until you realize that not all arrestees are criminals -- an arrest does not equal a conviction. An arrest is just a stop, a detainment. Traffic stops are short-duration arrests. Can DNA be taken if you're accused of having broken the speed limit?

The case split the course along statist/libertarian lines rather than left/right lines. Thus Kennedy, Roberts, and Alito joined liberal Breyer, and, maybe a little surprisingly, Clarence Thomas joined the majority opinion too. Scalia wrote the dissent that the other liberals joined.

I think it's pretty clear that Scalia is right about what the law is, and Kennedy & Co. are puffing gas about what they think the law should be, in order to run a more efficient government law enforcement operation.

And I think that's pretty clear because Kennedy and the others resort to obfuscation, which Scalia rubbishes.

Kennedy's claim is that DNA can and should be routinely taken from mere arrestees because of its important value in identifying a suspect. This is a vague word, in this context, and it selected precisely because it's vague.

The Fourth Amendment broadly rejects "suspicionless searches." It specifies that any search -- any involuntary evidence collection, that is, where the targeted person has a reasonable expectation of privacy -- be conducted pursuant to a specific, particularlized, announced suspicion of a crime, written up in a warrant, signed by a judge.

The taking of DNA as a routine operation is not that-- there is no warrant, no judge's signature, no specific annunciation of rational reasons to suspect a person. It's just a "suspicionless search" of, in this case, the arrestee's genetic makeup.

Now, to argue against that -- which is hard to do, because that's plainly what the DNA sampling is -- Kennedy resorts to claiming that there are reasons that have noting to do with suspicionless searches of the arrestee's body, mundane bureaucratic functions like "identifying" the suspect -- that is, confirming that the man you have arrested, calling himself, say, Allen Brown, is in fact Allen Brown, by checking the DNA you take from him against the National Genetic Identify File and thereby determining yup, it's Allen Brown.

Of course, this is ludicrous, as there is no "National Genetic Identity File," and no one checks CODIS, the national unsolved-crime DNA databank, to determine if the man calling himself Allen Brown is in fact Allen Brown. What they check it for is to see if Allen Brown's DNA matches up with any DNA collected from unknown persons at crime scenes.

This is what sets Scalia off, the pure intellectual and verbal dishonesty of this bait-and-switch, wherein Kennedy asserts that DNA is being taken to check if Allen Brown is Allen Brown, when he knows that's not the purpose of taking it. In fact, in the instant case, the police never bothered checking the arrestee's DNA for almost three months; if they really were concerned about the "identity" of the arrestee -- if they really weren't sure they had the right name for the guy in their custody -- they would have rushed the DNA test a lot quicker than that.

But of course they did know exactly who they had in their custody, and the DNA was not taken for purposes of "identifying" him. It was taken to check his DNA profile against the profiles of unknown perpetrators of past crimes.

Which is why he was subsequently arrested for rape.

There is no doubt that this arrest is good for society generally -- but based on Kennedy's dishonest defense of the practice, it also does not seem to conform to the Constitution or to American law.

And further, it seems that it would be a rather easy thing to correct: Post-conviction, the state could more easily justify swabbing all convicted criminals for DNA and, thereafter, checking those profiles against those in CODIS (a database of unknown criminal genetic signatures, as Scalia points out, not known ones, which would be way of it were it really for purposes of "identification.")

But this seems to be a case where we're throwing out the Constitution to help the State function more smoothly and efficiently.

We seem to be doing an awful lot of that lately.


digg this
posted by Ace at 02:30 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
[/i][/b]andycanuck (hovnC)[/s][/u]: "Maral Salmassi @MaralSalmassi Despite claims made ..."

jimmymcnulty: "Are Australian pizzas served upside down. Asking ..."

Viggo Tarasov: "Hey, that tweezer thing can really pluck someone u ..."

Eromero: "322 German police valiantly confiscating a Swiss A ..."

Anna Puma: "BOLO Rowdy the kangaroo has jumped his fence an ..."

fd: "You can't leave Islam. They won't let you. ..."

[/b][/s][/u][/i]muldoon, astronomically challenged: "German police valiantly confiscating a Swiss Army ..."

Cicero (@cicero43): "Hamas clearly recognises that when the cultural es ..."

Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd: "The only way you can defend this position is to ei ..."

Ciampino - See you don't solve it by banning guns: "303 BMW pretty low to ground ... at least it wasn ..."

NaCly Dog: "I had a UPS package assigned to a woman in another ..."

Dr. Not The 9 0'Clock News: "One high school history teacher I remember well, a ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64