Give me liberty or give me DNA testing

As you may know the Supreme Court just ruled that its okay for the police to take DNA samples from people arrested for “serious” offenses. What are serious offenses? Take your pick; as far as I can tell they don’t say. I suspect that a “serious offense” will gradually morph towards any offense where a person is arrested as the police will routinely take the DNA sample anyway. It will be on the checklist and the technician will simply follow the list.

Defense lawyers will have to go through the very expensive process to petition the Supreme Court for a definition. That can take years and the request may never be heard. That is the whole point of why the definition was left out.

Held: When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and 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. Pp. 3–28.

Juries are easily swayed by “technical discussions” that they don’t understand but appear credible. So even if the DNA evidence is found to be inconclusive, contaminated or possibly planted, its likely that the defendant will be found guilty. DNA evidence is not perfect.

Even more shocking is what I heard in the NBC Nightly News report about this at minute 2:50. Watch it yourself and be shocked.

Simply put, the NBC reporter said that almost 1 in 3 Americans will be arrested before the age 23! That’s ultimately well over 100,000,000 Americans, cuffed and booked! I don’t know how many more after age 23, but I suspect a lot! Many, if not all will be DNA swabbed and entered into a database for later use.

What does it say about a nation where possibly almost one half have been arrested, and I suspect many convicted or plea-bargained?

Your liberties and freedoms continue to be eroded. Have you ever read the First and Fourth Amendments? You should, as they are likely to become museum relics if we keep recklessly attacking the founding cornerstone document of our nation.

Editors Note: July 26, 2013, The FBI has found that their scientific testing methods have been potentially inaccurate in 2,000 convictions, including twenty-seven death penalty convictions, including DNA evidence.