Opinion ID: 2828520
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: unreasonable searches

Text: Given the scope of Varriale’s consent, the subsequent analysis and database comparison of Varriale’s DNA profile with the DNA profiles associated with cold cases in Anne Arundel County is a separate search. On the facts of this case, this second search was an unreasonable one that violated Varriale’s Fourth Amendment rights. The “match” resulting from further testing of his biological materials should have been suppressed. The Fourth Amendment guarantees that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated[.]” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Where an individual consents voluntarily to a search, that search does not violate his or her Fourth Amendment rights. See Maj. Slip Op. at 11–12 (discussing the standards for consent and “voluntariness”); State v. Green, 375 Md. 595, 609, 826 A.2d 486, 494 (2003) (“Where an individual’s encounter with the police is purely consensual, ‘no privacy interests [are] invaded and thus the Fourth Amendment is not implicated.’’) (quoting Ferris v. State, 355 Md. 356, 375, 735 A.2d 491, 501 (1999)). Once a search goes outside the scope of consent, however, it becomes unreasonable. See Jimeno, 500 U.S. at 252 (“A suspect may of course delimit as he chooses the scope of the search to which he consents.”); Gamble v. State, 318 Md. 120, 129, 567 A.2d 95, 100 (1989) (“‘[A] consensual search may go no further than the limits’ defined by the consent.” (quoting State v. Jensen, 723 P.2d 443, 446 (Wash. App. 1986))); Buckley v. State, 797 N.E.2d 845, 849 (Ind. Ct. App. 2003) (“Because [consent 10 to search] comes within an established exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, the scope of the authority to search is strictly limited to the consent given, and a consensual search is reasonable only if it is kept within the bound of that consent.”); State v. Binner, 886 P.2d 1056 (Or. App. 1994) (holding that a DNA sample taken for one purpose cannot be used subsequently for a different purpose without offending the Fourth Amendment); see also 4 LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 8.1(c) (8th ed. 2014) (“When the police are relying upon consent as the basis for their warrantless search, they have no more authority than they have apparently been given by the consent.”). Varriale consented for his DNA profile to be compared only to the DNA profile gleaned from the fingernail scrapings of the alleged rape victim. Had the police recovered other biological materials from the victim of the alleged crime scene of the rape, comparison of that with Varriale’s DNA profile would have been fair game under the consent given here. The further DNA comparison, achieved by searching LDIS, was outside, however, the scope of Varriale’s consent. Once outside the scope of consent, the far-ranging comparison search became a warrantless second search. “[W]e look at any DNA collection effort as two discrete and separate searches. The first search is the actual swab of the inside of [the suspect’s] mouth and the second is the analysis of the DNA sample thus obtained, a step required to produce the DNA profile.” King v. State, 425 Md. 550, 594, 42 A.3d 549, 575 (2012), rev’d, Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. ___, ___, 133 S. Ct. 1958, 1980 (2013) (determining that, under the specific circumstances of the case, the second search was reasonable); see Raynor v. State, 440 Md. 71, 98, 99 A.3d 753, 11 769 (2014) (Adkins, J., dissenting) (“As I see it, two distinct events happened in this case that raise Fourth Amendment concerns. The first is the State’s collection of Raynor’s DNA from the police station chair after inviting him to the station for questioning, as which time he refused to submit to DNA testing. The second is the analysis and submission to the CODIS database of the DNA.”); see also United States v. Mitchell, 652 F.3d 387, 407 (2011) (“The second ‘search’ at issue is, of course, the processing of the DNA sample and creation of the DNA profile for CODIS. This search also has the potential to infringe upon privacy rights.”). As the Majority points out, in Raynor, 440 Md. 71, 99 A.3d 753, this Court held that “once the state lawfully possessed a suspect’s DNA, subsequent testing of that DNA does not amount to a Fourth Amendment search,” to wit, the State collected lawfully biological materials discarded by a suspect in his perspiration on a chair in the police station. Maj. Slip Op. at 20. I conclude, however, under the Katz test, that subsequent testing does amount to a Fourth Amendment search in the consent context of the present case.