— The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for police around the country to take DNA samples from people arrested for serious crimes, a major step toward expanding a national database that will match new suspects to evidence from old crime scenes.
The decision means that a mouth swab for DNA is likely to become as common as taking fingerprints and a mug shot for those who are taken to a police station under arrest.
After the ruling, the sheriff’s office in Cook County said it plans to begin collecting DNA samples next month from jail inmates charged with murder, home invasion and certain sexual offenses. An Illinois law that took effect early last year allowed law enforcement officials throughout the state to take that action, but Cook County authorities decided to hold off until the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue.
The high court’s 5-4 vote Monday marked a major victory for criminal investigators, who say DNA testing is the most effective way to catch serial rapists, murderers and other violent criminals. Joined by victims’ rights advocates, they have pressed for more widespread testing of crime suspects.
But civil liberties advocates say the move comes at too high a price, given the amount of personal information that a DNA sample potentially can give the government.
All the states and the federal government take a DNA swab of someone convicted of a serious crime. And while 29 states, including Illinois, and the federal government go further and take DNA samples from at least some people put under arrest, the constitutionality of testing arrestees had remained in doubt pending a high court ruling.
In Monday’s decision, the justices rejected the claim that taking a mouth swab from a suspect amounts to an “unreasonable search.”
“The use of DNA for identification is no different than matching an arrestee’s face to a wanted poster of a previously unidentified suspect … or matching the arrestee’s fingerprints to those recovered from a crime scene,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The only difference between DNA analysis and the accepted use of fingerprints databases is the unparalleled accuracy DNA provides.”
But Justice Antonin Scalia, who joined three of the court’s liberal justices in an unusual lineup, said in an acerbic opinion that taking DNA had nothing to do with identification and everything to do with what the Fourth Amendment prohibits — searching people for evidence of a crime without any individual cause. Scalia predicted it will lead to testing of all arrestees.
“If you believe that a DNA search will identify someone arrested for bank robbery, you must believe that it will identify someone arrested for running a red light,” said Scalia, reading a portion of his dissent from the bench. “In the end, logic will win out. Make no mistake about it: Because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, for whatever reason.”
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Kennedy said taking a mouth swap is only a “minimal” intrusion on an individual’s privacy.
“When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Kennedy concluded.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito agreed.
The decision in the case of Maryland v. King upheld the rape conviction of Alonzo King Jr. When he was arrested in 2009 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for an alleged assault with a shotgun, his DNA sample was taken during the booking. Three weeks later, the state crime lab identified him as the perpetrator of an unsolved rape in his neighborhood from 2003. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape.
With the court upholding DNA testing, the Cook County sheriff’s office will now move forward with plans to swab for the genetic profiles of scores of inmates in the county jail who fall under the Illinois statute, a spokeswoman said. New inmates coming into the system will also be swabbed, she said. Defendants who have posted bond could be subject to DNA swabs when they show up for their court cases.
“We will have a procedure in place by July 1,” said Cara Smith, a spokeswoman for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
Before the change in the Illinois law in January 2012, police could take DNA samples only after defendants had been convicted or if authorities obtained either the suspect’s permission or a search warrant from a judge.
Under the current state law, defendants can be swabbed only after they have been indicted by a grand jury or a judge has found probable cause for the charges at a preliminary hearing. In Cook County, that process typically takes weeks after an arrest. DNA can be collected only from suspects charged with first-degree murder, home invasion, aggravated criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault or criminal sexual abuse.
A spokeswoman for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said the Supreme Court decision upholding the broader Maryland law could lead to legislative efforts to expand Illinois’ law again. The spokeswoman, Sally Daly, said the law could be changed to allow swabs much sooner in the process or could be expanded to other serious crimes such as armed robbery or aggravated battery.
“It’s a very welcome ruling for law enforcement,” she said. “It’s such an important tool to identify an offender as early on in the process as possible and determine if this person has other crimes they may be wanted for.”
Daly noted that an early DNA sample could also lead to a defendant’s exoneration.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois opposed the legislation in Springfield on the basis that collecting “intimate information about people who are presumed innocent” was an invasion of privacy, said spokesman Ed Yohnka. Unlike fingerprints, he said, DNA contains personal information about everything from a person’s health history to heredity.
“Once that massive database (of DNA information) exists, people are going to want access to it,” he said. “Once it’s there, it’s just a gold mine for private interests.”
Savage is in the Washington Bureau. Meisner reported from Chicago.