ABC NEWS — The Supreme Court today upheld a Maryland law that allows officials to take DNA without a warrant from those who have been arrested, but not convicted of a serious crime.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, for a 5-4 majority, wrote, “the Court concludes that DNA identification of arrestees is a reasonable search that can be considered part of a routine booking procedure.”
He called the buccal swab to the mouth to obtain DNA a “minor intrusion.”
“When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they 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,” Kennedy wrote.
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