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A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that collecting DNA evidence from nonviolent drug offenders doesn't violate their privacy rights.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' 2-1 decision came in the case of Thomas Kriesel, a nonviolent drug offender who refused to give a DNA sample after his release from prison.
A 2000 federal law requiring that violent felons give a DNA sample to be kept in a national law enforcement database was extended to all felons in 2004.
Writing for the majority, Judge M. Margaret McKeown said the law was constitutional.
"The government's significant interests in identifying supervised releasees, preventing recidivism, and solving past crimes outweigh the diminished privacy interests" of convicted felons, McKeown wrote.
The dissenter, Judge Betty Fletcher, said the decision was made with "an air of shrugging inevitability."
Fletcher said the decision "approves, without flinching, a statute that effects a far broader and far less justified erosion of the Fourth Amendment."
The judge said if Kriesel's DNA is collected it will be retained in a database, submitting him to "repeated searches of his DNA whenever the...
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' 2-1 decision came in the case of Thomas Kriesel, a nonviolent drug offender who refused to give a DNA sample after his release from prison.
A 2000 federal law requiring that violent felons give a DNA sample to be kept in a national law enforcement database was extended to all felons in 2004.
Writing for the majority, Judge M. Margaret McKeown said the law was constitutional.
"The government's significant interests in identifying supervised releasees, preventing recidivism, and solving past crimes outweigh the diminished privacy interests" of convicted felons, McKeown wrote.
The dissenter, Judge Betty Fletcher, said the decision was made with "an air of shrugging inevitability."
Fletcher said the decision "approves, without flinching, a statute that effects a far broader and far less justified erosion of the Fourth Amendment."
The judge said if Kriesel's DNA is collected it will be retained in a database, submitting him to "repeated searches of his DNA whenever the...