Opinion ID: 2303018
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: King's Expectation of Privacy

Text: King must have a personal, subjective expectation of privacy in order for Fourth Amendment protections to apply. See Katz, 389 U.S. at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 516, 19 L.Ed.2d at 588. As Judge Wilner's concurring opinion in Raines noted, DNA samples contain a massive amount of deeply personal information. 383 Md. at 50, 857 A.2d at 48. The State advances the syllogism that all that was obtained through [the] search [of King] was his identityin the form of 13 pairs of numbers; there is no right to anonymity; and, thus, the evidence presented at trial is not suppressible. This argument ignores plainly the implications of the search that took place. That the Maryland DNA Collection Act restricts the use of the biological material obtained does not change the nature of the search. As Judge Rendell noted in her dissenting opinion in Mitchell, upholding the statute simply because of restrictions on use of the material obtained would be analogous to allowing the government to seize private medical records without a warrant, but restrict their use only to the portion of the records that serve to identify the patient. This analogy addresses the State's stance of denying the importance or relevance of the initial physical intrusion and the later processing of King's genetic materials. King, as an arrestee, had an expectation of privacy to be free from warrantless searches of his biological material and all of the information contained within that material. We do not embrace wholly the analogy between fingerprints and DNA samples advanced in Judge Raker's concurring opinion in Raines and by the State in the present case. As aptly noted, fingerprints are a physical set of ridges on the skin of a person's fingers that, when exposed to ink (or other medium) and the resultant imprint placed on paper or electronic records, can determine usually and accurately a person's identity by matching the physical characteristics to a known set of fingerprints. DNA, on the other hand, is contained within our cells and is collected by swabbing the interior of a cheek (or blood draw or otherwise obtained biological material). While the physical intrusion of a buccal swab is deemed minimal, it remains distinct from a fingerprint. We must consider that [t]he importance of informed, detached and deliberate determinations of the issue whether or not to invade another's body in search of evidence of guilt is indisputable and great. Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 770, 86 S.Ct. at 1835, 16 L.Ed.2d at 919. The information derived from a fingerprint is related only to physical characteristics and can be used to identify a person, but no more. A DNA sample, obtained through a buccal swab, contains within it unarguably much more than a person's identity. Although the Maryland DNA Collection Act restricts the DNA profile to identifying information only, we can not turn a blind eye to the vast genetic treasure map that remains in the DNA sample retained by the State. As Judge Wilner noted in his concurring opinion in Raines, A person's entire genetic makeup and history is forcibly seized and maintained in a government file, subject only to the law's direction that it not be improperly used and the prospect of a misdemeanor conviction if a custodian willfully discloses it in an unauthorized manner. No sanction is provided for if the information is non-willfully disclosed in an unauthorized manner, though the harm is essentially the same. 383 Md. at 50, 857 A.2d at 49. In Raines, the State's interest regarding DNA collection from convicted felons overwhelmed these considerations. We do not revisit or question that result. Convicted felons are not at issue here. The greater expectation of privacy of an arrestee and the lesser legitimate interest of the State bring concerns about the privacy of genetic material to a different dynamic in the application of the balancing test. Courts that have upheld DNA collection from arrestees have done so by relying on the fingerprint-to-DNA analogy and a belief that DNA collection has become just another routine booking procedure. While it may be elementary that arrestees undergo photographic and fingerprinting collection, neither of these techniques has undergone definitive Fourth Amendment scrutiny. Even were the fingerprint-to-DNA analogy less tenuous, as described supra, we should not be so quick to heap additional exceptions onto a constitutional principle, without a clearer, judicially-proven foundation. The State underestimates, in seeking to apply conclusively our holding in Raines to the present case, the power of a conviction. Raines's conviction was critical to our analysis there, that convicted felons have a severely reduced expectation of privacy; the difference regarding a mere arrestee is critical here. Although arrestees do not have all the expectations of privacy enjoyed by the general public, the presumption of innocence bestows on them greater protections than convicted felons, parolees, or probationers. A judicial determination of criminality, conducted properly, changes drastically an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. The expungement provisions of the Act recognize the importance of a conviction in altering the scope and reasonableness of the expectation of privacy. If an individual is not convicted of a qualifying crime or if the original charges are dropped, the DNA sample and DNA profile are destroyed. The General Assembly recognized the full scope of the information collected by DNA sampling and the rights of persons not convicted of qualifying crimes to keep this information private. This right should not be abrogated by the mere charging with a criminal offense: the arrestee's presumption of innocence remains. The percentage of individuals charged with felonies that are convicted eventually is persuasive. According to data collected by the FBI in 2004, between 16 and 71 percent of individuals charged with a felony are convicted eventually (including guilty pleas), depending on the crime. [32] Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, tbl. 5.0002.2004 (Kathleen Maguire ed.), available at http://www.albany. edu/sourcebook/pdf/t500022004.pdf (last visited 20 Apr. 2012). The reasons for this disparity between arrests and convictions are not always apparent, but they illustrate the potential amount of DNA samples that would be collected and processed without a finding of guilt. We agree with the Minnesota Court of Appeals in C.T.L. that establishing probable cause to arrest a person is not, by itself, sufficient to permit a biological specimen to be taken from the person without first obtaining a search warrant. 722 N.W.2d at 490. A finding of probable cause for arrest on a crime of violence under the Maryland DNA Collection Act cannot serve as the probable cause for a DNA search of an arrestee.