SCOTUS Ruling On DNA Swabbing Opens Door To Solving Many Cases, But Is It Legal?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – You can make the case, and I suppose they will make the case that the new set of fingerprints was obtained legally, that there was cause to get them, and that a warrant did issue, or because they were arrested in violation of an existing statute that they were fingerprinted.  It just so happens that that fingerprint then matches that of someone else in another case that could then be reopened.  Is that person then or has that person been illegally searched according to the constitutions of the states?  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Let’s go back to the telephones.  Patrick in Texas is next.  Hello, Patrick.

Caller Patrick:  Good morning, sir.  I was calling to support your breaking of the Birzer Effect and to tell you that I’ve become aware in the last couple days of a situation in Louisiana that’s eerily similar to the Maryland case.  A family member of mine was involved in an assault in New Orleans ten-plus years ago, and within the last couple of days was contacted by an agency out of New Orleans — I don’t know if it was NOPD or the Louisiana State Police — inquiring as to whether she was interested in pursuing her assault case against a person who had recently been arrested and swabbed and found that the DNA was a match to her case.  Apparently they collected DNA evidence ten-plus years ago.  The window of opportunity is fairly long in these matters and would probably explain why attorneys general in the various states were supporting this SCOTUS decision.  It’s happening all around us.

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Mike:  So there are more instances where contemporary harvesting of DNA is being collected.  Then when the results are transmitted to various law enforcement agencies, they go: Wait a minute, that DNA matches this case here.

Caller Patrick:  I’m thinking they may be wanting to use the older cases such as the one that I’m just now becoming of as maybe pressure to cop a plea on either more recent or more important cases that they’ve got this person associated with through the DNA evidence.  You might think about it as the Eric Holder theory that it’s really not in violation of your personal freedoms if I really don’t intend to prosecute you on the older case.  They may just want to use it for the purposes of putting pressure on a more recent or important case.

Mike:  So would the gathering then or the use of a fingerprint be the same as the use of deoxyribonucleic acid?

Caller Patrick:  I would think under that theory it would be.

Mike:  Let’s just say you get stopped somewhere or you’re arrested for some unrelated offense in 2013 and you’re fingerprinted.  They turn your fingerprints over to NCIC or whatever agency and somebody is going through databases and doing computer searches for matching fingerprints and go: Aha!  We have matching fingerprints here from a case where we’re looking for a perp from 2003, ten years ago.  Statute of limitations isn’t up in this state.  Let’s ask that state to extradite this person and bring them in here.

You can make the case, and I suppose they will make the case that the new set of fingerprints was obtained legally, that there was cause to get them, and that a warrant did issue, or because they were arrested in violation of an existing statute that they were fingerprinted.  It just so happens that that fingerprint then matches that of someone else in another case that could then be reopened.  Is that person then or has that person been illegally searched according to the constitutions of the states?  As I read the Louisiana Constitution, and you just mentioned that case, which I’m not familiar with but I’m going to look it up, it would seem to me that since the proper channels were used to obtain the second set of prints, that they match an earlier case, that doesn’t seem to me to be an evisceration of a civil liberty.  If someone was brought in because they thought: We can’t get him on that earlier case because the judge won’t issue a warrant, but we’ll follow him until he runs a stop sign, and then we’ll nab him and get the print.  Then I have a problem with it.  You see what I’m saying?

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Caller Patrick:  Right.  I think those are completely separate circumstances.

Mike:  But you can define that by statute, I think, but now you can’t.  Now you can’t.  Now the Supreme Court has basically said: No, it doesn’t matter what’s on the statute; they can use it.  That’s the problem with the one-size-fits-all, and that’s the problem with not having the Constitution as a compact, with having a court that deigns to make law for 311 million people and 50 state legislatures, even though in this instance the states copped out and asked the SCOTUS to do it.  That doesn’t mean that the SCOTUS has the authority.  Someone has to respect the damn Bill of Rights.  Someone has to respect the Constitution as a compact as a system and federalism or republicanism that would ensue.  I appreciate the head’s up on the case.  I had not heard of that.

End Mike Church Show Transcript