The United States Supreme Court announced on Friday, November 9th, 2012 that it will review Maryland's DNA law, which so far allows police to collect samples of suspects' genetic material (without their permission) for possible matches to other crimes, in 2013.
The Maryland DNA law, a key crime-fighting initiative of Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, was ruled unconstitutional by the Maryland Court of Appeals, the State's highest court in April 2012. However, in July 2012, SCOTUS's Chief Justice, John G. Roberts, Jr., issued an order allowing police to continue collecting the DNA samples from suspects, signaling that the highest court in the nation may ultimately consider and weigh in on the issue.
The case at issue is Maryland v. King, S. Ct. Docket No. 12-207 (Term: OT 2012), 425 Md. 550, 42 A. 3d 549 (2012), which comes from a previously unsolved 2003 rape case in Salisbury, Maryland. When a DNA sample was taken from the suspect, Alonzo Jay King, Jr., after an arrest on unrelated assault charges in 2009, it was used to convict him of the earlier unsolved rape crime of 2003. Declaring that the use of King's DNA violated his constitutional rights, the Maryland Court of Appeals (MCOA) overturned his conviction on April 12, 2012 and remanded the case back to trial court.
It is anticipated that a key issue to be raised before SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States) is whether the collection (or taking) of suspects' DNA before they are even convicted of crimes and using the DNA samples to link the suspects to previous or future crimes violates their right of privacy and constitutes an unlawful search and seizure under the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Maryland DNA law went into effect in 2009. Supporters of the law equate the collection of DNA from suspects to the collection of fingerprints.
The law is officially titled: The Maryland DNA Collection Act, Md. Pub. Saf. Code Ann. § 2-501 et seq. (Lexis 2011).
[articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-11-09/new/ "Supreme Court Will Review Md. DNA Law"; www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/ Maryland v. King, 07/30/2012, No. 12A48, U.S. Supreme Court; www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/maryland-v-king]
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