Maryland v.

King Dissent In the United States of America all people are considered innocent of any crime until proven guilty. However that is not to say that if someone is arrested for a crime, or even detained they cannot have their identities checked. That is the issue in this case. The majority has the flawed belief that another form of checking someones identity is, due to its newness, unconstitutional. This is wrong. If you are pulled over in America by a police officer, your name and plate will be run against databases to see if you have any outstanding warrants. This is considered perfectly acceptable if not excepted of police officers. There is a similar situation, more relevant to the one at hand with fingerprinting. When a suspect is brought into custody, their prints are taken and run to see if they are who they say they are and if they can be tied to any outstanding cases. This is again perfectly acceptable and excepted. The difference between DNA swabbing and finger printing is that it is far newer and could potentially provide far more information. However the law that allows for the checking of the DNA explicitly forbids keeping the DNA of someone not convicted of a crime. Also the DNA read is simply unique to the person, it does not give personal information. This is only useful to the fighting of crime, nothing else. The procedure cannot be considered invasive, as the court ruled in Schmerber v. California a blood test was non-invasive, so a simple cheek swab should be fine. The fact that it is allowed for the police to collect fingerprints is important to their fighting of crime. In this new century the front line of crime fighting is checking DNA, this court cannot consider the implications of someone violating this law, as

that is already accepted to be a crime, simply the following of the letter of the law. In this case the law simply allows for the criminal records of arrestees to be checked. A constitutionally valid use of power.