Search and Seizure – DNA samples

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Search and Seizure – DNA samples

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.

By comparison to the substantial government interest and the unique effectiveness of DNA identification, the intrusion of a cheek swab to obtain a DNA sample is minimal. Reasonableness must be considered in the context of an individual’s legitimate privacy expectations, which necessarily diminish when he is taken into police custody. Bell, supra, at 557. Such searches thus differ from the so-called special needs searches of, e.g., otherwise law-abiding motorists at checkpoints. See Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U. S. 32. The reasonableness inquiry considers two other circumstances in which particularized suspicion is not categorically required: “diminished expectations of privacy [and a] minimal intrusion.” Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U. S. 326, 330. An invasive surgery may raise privacy concerns weighty enough for the search to require a warrant, notwithstanding the arrestee’s diminished privacy expectations, but a buccal swab, which involves a brief and minimal intrusion with “virtually no risk, trauma, or pain,” Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 771, does not increase the indignity already attendant to normal incidents of arrest.

425 Md. 550, 42 A. 3d 549, reversed.

12-207 Maryland v. King

Kennedy, J.; Scalia, J., dissenting.

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