Supreme Court Briefs: Maryland v. King (Patreon)

Maryland v. King

In episode 38 of Supreme Court Briefs, a man is arrested and a sample of his DNA is taken and put into a database. The DNA sample comes back months later to reveal it matched the DNA in a rape case and he is charged with the rape. Wait a second, what about the Fourth Amendment? This episode was suggested by my wonderful Patreon supporter Beau Branch! Want a specific SCOTUS case covered? Your idea gets picked when you donate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/iammrbeat Donate on Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/mrbeat Mr. Beat's band: http://electricneedleroom.net/ Mr. Beat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/beatmastermatt Mr. Beat on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iammrbeat/ Produced by Matt Beat. All images and video used under fair use, original content, or found in the public domain. Music by Electric Needle Room (Matt Beat). Check out cool primary sources here: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-207 Other sources used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_v._King https://www.businessinsider.com/scalias-dissent-in-maryland-v-king-2013-6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-scalia-analysis/analysis-with-trademark-vigor-justice-scalia-dissents-in-dna-case-idUSBRE95211Y20130603 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/supreme-court-says-police-can-take-dna-samples.html http://www.wboc.com/story/13286643/salisbury-man-sentenced-to-life-for-rape https://www.washingtonian.com/2013/04/30/truth-and-consequences/ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/supreme_court_and_dna_collection_maryland_v_king.html?scrlybrkr=2b70fde4 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/12-207 http://www.ncsl.org/Documents/cj/ArresteeDNALaws.pdf Photo credits: daveparker Jay Cross Chris Yarzab West Midlands Police Salisbury, Maryland April 10, 2009 Police arrest Alonzo King, Jr. for waving a gun at a group of people. They later find a 12-gauge shotgun in his car and charge him with assault. So you see, in Maryland there’s this law called the DNA Collection Act. It gives the police the authority to collect DNA samples and put them in a database prior to convicting the person. So back at the station, police get a sample of King’s DNA by swabbing the inside of his cheek, sending it to be analyzed and uploaded to the database. On August 4, the results came back, showing King’s DNA matched the DNA in an unsolved rape case from 2003. A grand jury said dude, we are indicting you for that, so King went on trial for the rape case. King was like, what? What does that have to do with the reason why I got arrested in the first place? He filed a motion to block the DNA evidence from being used in court for Wicomico County, saying his Fourth Amendment rights were broken because the DNA swab fell under unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge denied his motion, and King pleaded not guilty to the rape charge. The DNA sample was the only real evidence linking King to the rape. The trial court found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. However, King appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals, who reversed the conviction, saying the DNA sampling went against the Fourth Amendment as King argued. They argued King’s right to privacy was more important than Maryland’s desire to use his DNA to identify him. And yet, they still said the DNA Collection Act was constitutional. Maryland appealed the ruling, asking the Supreme Court to look at the case, and they did on February 26, 2013. The main issue with this case was whether or not the Fourth Amendment allowed states to sample and analyze DNA from folks arrested but not convicted of serious crimes. The Court announced their decision on June 3rd. They sided with Maryland. It was 5-4, but it wasn’t your typical liberal-leaning vs. conservative-leaning decision. I mean, you had Antonin Scalia on the same team as Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for crying out loud. Justice Anthony Kennedy gave the opinion, arguing the DNA swab test did NOT violate the Fourth Amendment because it served the safety of the state of Maryland, yet wasn’t too invasive where a warrant would be needed. The Court also argued that the DNA records were basically just an extension of other ways the police already kept databases of people they arrested to help solve future crimes, comparing it to things like fingerprinting. Justice Scalia wrote a passionate dissent, arguing the Fourth Amendment definitely prohibits the police from searching a person for evidence of a crime if it’s a completely different crime than the one the person was arrested for. Scalia argued sure, the DNA of arrested people helps the police solve more crimes, but they could also solve more crimes if they collected DNA anytime someone enrolled in public school or got a driver’s license, which was an absurd thing to consider.