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| Court OKs DNA collection from parolees |
| By San Francisco Chronicle |
| Published: 08/23/2004 |
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A federal appeals court reversed itself last Wednesday and ruled that the government can draw blood from federal parolees for a DNA databank used to investigate crimes -- a decision that dissenters called an invitation to repression. The 6-5 ruling upholds a 2000 federal law and lifts a cloud over similar laws in every state. In California, where state officials say genetic samples from convicted criminals have been used to prosecute more than 400 cases, an initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot, Proposition 69, would expand the databank to include DNA from everyone arrested for a felony. A panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had declared the law unconstitutional in a 2-1 ruling in October -- the first appellate ruling against the law, which had been upheld by other courts. The full court then granted the Bush administration's request for a rehearing. Wednesday's ruling contained strong language on both sides of the case. Under the court's rationale, "all Americans will be at risk, sooner rather than later, of having our DNA samples permanently placed on file in federal cyberspace,'' where it could someday be used "to repress dissent, or, quite literally, to eliminate political opposition,'' said dissenting Judge Stephen Reinhardt, author of the panel's October ruling. Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, who wrote the lead opinion Wednesday, said Reinhardt was invoking "dramatic Hollywood fantasies'' and using an "alarmist tone'' to greatly exaggerate the scope of the ruling. O'Scannlain noted that the federal law applies only to convicted criminals and said courts were capable of protecting the privacy of law-abiding citizens. The law requires federal inmates convicted of serious crimes, and those on parole after serving sentences for serious crimes, to give blood for a DNA databank maintained by the FBI to compare with evidence found during criminal investigations. The court said more than 1.6 million samples have been collected. In the October ruling, the court majority said the law violates the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches because it requires extraction of blood from parolees who are not suspected of committing new crimes. But the court said last Wednesday that no such suspicion is required to justify a search of a parolee. Compared to the general public, criminals on probation or parole have "severely constructed expectations of privacy,'' O'Scannlain said. He said that drawing blood from parolees for a databank is "minimally invasive'' and that the privacy intrusion is greatly outweighed by the government's need for DNA evidence in solving crimes. |
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