DNA and the Constitution
By Editorial,
The New York Times
| 02. 24. 2013
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument about whether it is constitutional for a state to collect DNA from people charged with violent crimes but not yet convicted. Last April, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that a state law authorizing such collection violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Maryland law enforcement officials were allowed to continue collecting DNA samples, however, through an order last July by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. He said there was a “fair prospect” that the Supreme Court would reverse the Maryland decision, which conflicts with rulings of the Virginia Supreme Court and of the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third and the Ninth Circuits on similar statutes in other states. But the justices should uphold the Maryland court’s ruling, thus calling into question those other rulings. The Maryland law clearly contravenes the Fourth Amendment.
The case involves the collection of DNA from Alonzo Jay King Jr. after his arrest on assault charges in 2009. His DNA profile matched evidence from a rape in 2003, and...
Related Articles
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News | 07.09.2024
A Netflix docuseries has put a spotlight on the unregulated world of sperm donation, particularly the lack of stopgap measures that might prevent donors who have been banned by one country from simply going elsewhere to donate more.
Released earlier...
By Amanda Becker and Shefali Luthra, The 19th | 07.08.2024
Image by Duke University Archives from Flickr
Republicans have adopted a slate of policy positions ahead of next week’s convention that does not call for a federal legislative abortion ban, but opens the door to establishing fetal personhood.
The Republican...
By Isabelle Bartram
| 07.17.2024
Image by Kuzzat Altay from Unsplash
Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority in China, are mainly located in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. The Chinese government has pursued an aggressive settlement policy in this region since 1949, with the percentage of Han Chinese in the region increasing from five to forty percent in the second half of the 20th century. Since 2014, the Uyghurs have been subject to persecution and re-education – various sources have estimated that at least one million...