Taking DNA samples from criminal suspects before arraignment now is state law, but that does not mean our legislators can just forget about it. The General Assembly’s work is far from done even if this and similar measures in about a dozen states survive court challenges.
All agree precise DNA testing is the most important forensic science breakthrough in history. It joins fingerprints, photography and ballistics among swords of justice cutting loose the innocent and punishing the guilty.
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But as problems revealed in Baltimore City’s lab last year prove beyond a reasonable doubt, DNA evidence — as all science — is far from foolproof.
Without question, this massive increase in sample collection, storage and analysis will increase opportunity for error exponentially. Lawmakers increased resources, but no one yet knows whether it was enough or too much.
Mark that as one good reason to maintain legislative oversight. A better reason is to ensure the DNA evidence workload does not drain personnel, equipment and time from other effective crime-fighting weapons. But the best reason of all is the inescapable fact this law treads upon a founding principle of our nation: The government has no right to mess with us unless it shows toughly tested good cause.
Police arrest thousands of innocent citizens every year. In Maryland, under the law effective Jan. 1, they can seize fundamental substance of someone’s being, and hold it until comparison testing is allowed after arraignment, when police have to convince a judge that there is good reason to believe a specific crime has been committed and a particular person did it.
Beyond the fact that our new DNA law is — at best — questionable under our Constitution, it definitely is a complicated, cumbersome system vulnerable to incompetence and corruption.
It also must pass the cost/benefit test legislators are so bad at calculating, and that street cops are so good at calculating while holding back a tsunami of crime with a few sandbags.
Is this the most effective use of limited resources in preventing crime? Prevention is the oft-forgotten primary mission of criminal justice.
Usually legislators should just pass laws, then get out of the way and let professionals do their jobs.
This time, for these reasons, the General Assembly must monitor this law in action.
FOURTH AMENDMENT
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
