Opinion ID: 787362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Dangers of Adopting the Totality of the Circumstances

Text: 146 The rationale employed by the plurality would set us on a dangerous path. The plurality claims that the totality of the circumstances analysis applies simply because probationers and parolees have reduced expectations of privacy. If that is the case, it is impossible to see why a similar test would not apply in a multitude of other circumstances in which no individualized suspicion exists. I do not mean to suggest that the application of the totality of the circumstances test is dangerous per se. As I have explained, courts have traditionally balanced all of the relevant circumstances when evaluating the sufficiency of an officer's suspicion to search in the absence of a warrant or determining whether reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause is sufficient. The danger in the plurality's approach lies in its willingness to apply the totality of the circumstances test to uphold law enforcement searches where no suspicion at all exists. Under such an approach, all of us would inevitably have our liberty eroded when our privacy interests are balanced against the monumental interests of law enforcement. 147 The plurality's rationale, if employed in future cases, would result in the end of the Fourth Amendment's general requirement that searches be based on individual suspicion. Under the plurality's reasoning, the judicial assessment of a parole or probation search's reasonableness outside the strictures of special needs analysis, ante at 832, is justified by the fact that conditional releasees have diminished expectations of privacy. If reduced expectations of privacy render inapplicable the requirement of individualized suspicion, then suspicionless searches would be valid in many more situations than the plurality would presently be willing to admit. 148 The Court has identified countless groups of individuals who have reduced expectations of privacy. Conditional releasees are obviously one such group. See Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 478, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972). But they are not the only one. All students who attend public schools have significantly diminished expectations of privacy, Bd. of Educ. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 830-31, 122 S.Ct. 2559, 153 L.Ed.2d 735 (2002), and students who voluntarily participate in extracurricular activities have even less of an expectation, see id. at 831-32, 122 S.Ct. 2559. 25 Drivers and passengers of vehicles have reduced expectations of privacy. See, e.g., Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 303, 119 S.Ct. 1297, 143 L.Ed.2d 408 (1999); Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940, 116 S.Ct. 2485, 135 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1996). Arrestees' privacy expectations, too, appear to be significantly reduced. See Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762-63, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). These are but a few examples. Under the analysis engaged in by the plurality, a totality of the circumstances test would apply to any suspicionless search regime involving these groups. Certainly, the totality of the circumstances test would apply when we are forced to review again the DNA Act once it is expanded, as it inevitably will be, to require DNA samples from all arrestees — a particularly frightening prospect when one considers that the Constitution apparently allows police officers to arrest individuals for a nearly limitless range of conduct, including refusing to provide one's name to an inquiring law enforcement official. See Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nevada, ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 2451, 159 L.Ed.2d 292, 2004 WL 1373207 (June 21, 2004); see also Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 354, 121 S.Ct. 1536, 149 L.Ed.2d 549 (2001). 149 If the totality of the circumstance test could be used to justify suspicionless law enforcement searches, the Fourth Amendment would be little more than an afterthought as the government seeks to conduct more and more invasive general programs in the name of law enforcement. This would be so even if the searches, at least initially, were confined to persons with reduced expectations of privacy. We have already seen the expansion of CODIS and the DNA Act — an expansion that today is authorized by my colleagues under the Fourth Amendment. Even worse, if such expansion is possible with respect to forcible extractions of blood to be included in CODIS, numerous less or equally intrusive methods of evidence collection — namely, all ordinary searches and seizures except perhaps for those requiring more extensive bodily invasions — will all be valid when justified by the government's persuasive law enforcement objectives — at least for the vast majority of us who at some times or others in our lives have a reduced expectation of privacy. Indeed, in the face of monumental governmental law enforcement interests, I find it difficult to understand when suspicionless searches would be found to violate the Fourth Amendment. 150 The plurality's answer to this is not reassuring:Where a given search or class of searches cannot satisfy the traditional totality of the circumstances test, conditional releasees may lay claim to constitutional relief — just like any other citizen. Ante, at 834-835. 26 The problem with my the plurality's view is that under the balancing analysis it has performed, it is difficult to imagine how privacy interests could ever prevail over law enforcement needs. 151 Here, the plurality proclaims that the search in question consists only of the physical piercing of an individual's skin in order to extract his blood. Despite the obvious privacy intrusions suffered by those whose data are included in a permanent governmental database, with which the government can conduct repeated searches of the individual's genetic profile forever, the plurality concludes that the Fourth Amendment intrusion constitutes an insignificant invasion of privacy. If the invasion were insignificant, the government would not need to do much to show that its interests made the insignificant search reasonable. According to the plurality, however, society has an overwhelming interest in ensuring that conditional releasees comply with the terms of their release, an enormous interest in reducing recidivism, and a substantial interest in contributing to the solution of past offenses in order to bring closure to countless victims of crime. Ante, at 838-839. The combined weight of these interests, we are told, is monumental. Id. at 839. So, likely, would be the law enforcement interests in any suspicionless search regime. 27 152 The impotence of judicial review under the totality of the circumstances approach is on full display in the plurality's opinion. The balancing of interests does not provide much of a balance — to the contrary, any reasonable reading of the plurality's decision reveals that the balance will always tilt in favor of the government. There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). The plurality's boundless regime has already buckled under the pressures to strengthen the hand of law enforcement; it will only worsen as the war on terror demands more. I see no reason to depart from the workable constitutional framework, supported by generations of considered jurisprudence on the matter, for determining when suspicionless programmatic searches are permissible and when they are not. I would limit our inquiry to the special needs test. 153 C. Even Under the Totality of the Circumstances Test, the Searches Authorized by the DNA Act Are Unreasonable 154 Although the test used by the plurality provides no meaningful guidance, I believe that even under that standard a faithful application of the principles central to the Fourth Amendment would require invalidation of the search regime. Under a balancing test, whether a given search is reasonable turns on several factors — the level of the searched individual's expectation of privacy, the character of the intrusion, and the strength of the government's interests — all of which must be balanced against each other in light of the facts of each case. Balancing those factors, I would hold that the totality of the circumstances makes the searches authorized by the DNA Act unreasonable.
155 The intrusion authorized by the DNA Act is significant. As the Supreme Court explained in Skinner v. Ry. Labor Executives' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989), a compelled intrusion into the body for blood to be analyzed ... must be deemed a Fourth Amendment search. In light of our society's concern for the security of one's person, it is obvious that this physical intrusion, penetrating beneath the skin, infringes an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. Id. at 616, 109 S.Ct. 1402 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 767, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966); United States v. Wright, 215 F.3d 1020, 1025 (9th Cir.2000). Even though the Court has in some cases upheld such searches as constitutional, it has insisted that searches of an individual's body are severe, though brief, intrusion[s] upon cherished personal security that [are] subject to constitutional scrutiny. Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 295, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973). 156 It is true that courts have sometimes described the privacy invasion caused by blood tests in less forceful terms. The search in question, however, constitutes far more of an intrusion than the mere insertion of a needle into an individual's body and the consequent extraction of a blood sample. 28 In prior cases dealing with the level of intrusion authorized by the taking of blood samples, courts did not confront a regime in which the samples were turned into profiles capable of being searched time and time again throughout the course of an individual's life. See, e.g., Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 768-69, 86 S.Ct. 1826 (describing the blood test as designed to produce evidence of inebriation at the time of the search). The startling advance of technology has magnified the power of the initial search authorized by the DNA Act, such that the invasion of privacy is vastly more significant that we might have previously assumed. Here, the DNA placed in the CODIS database contains sensitive information, and no one can say today what future uses will be made of it once it is entered into governmental files; certainly, today's restrictions provide no guarantees regarding future governmental uses. To reduce the searches authorized by the DNA Act to the physical act of taking blood would be to ignore the totality of the circumstances surrounding the search and to ignore the manner in which the advance of technology has affected the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33-34, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001). We cannot ignore technological developments in the Fourth Amendment context, but instead must confront what limits there are upon this power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy. Id. at 34, 121 S.Ct. 2038. 157 I would hold that the invasion of privacy required by the DNA Act is substantial. The Act is unprecedented in its scope and threatens only to expand once we have justified its initial forms. With the substantial nature of the invasion in mind, I turn to the reasonable expectations of privacy held by probationers and parolees.
158 It is by now a banal observation that probationers and parolees have diminished expectations of privacy. See United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 119, 122 S.Ct. 587, 151 L.Ed.2d 497 (2001). As Knights explained, probationers' and parolees' expectations of privacy are curtailed, and society may therefore impose reasonable conditions that deprive the offender of some freedoms enjoyed by law-abiding citizens. Id. at 119, 122 S.Ct. 587 (emphasis added). But the error the plurality makes is treating a reduction of some freedoms as if it were equivalent to the elimination of all. Despite my colleagues' evident views to the contrary, conditional releasees do retain privacy expectations. All of the authorities cited by the plurality discuss the reduced, not the eliminated, expectations of privacy conditional releasees have during their period of supervision by the state. See, e.g., id. at 118-19, 122 S.Ct. 587 (emphasizing that the most salient fact in its totality of the circumstances analysis was that Knights was subject to a probation search condition that significantly diminished [his] reasonable expectation of privacy); Griffin, 483 U.S. at 874, 107 S.Ct. 3164; Latta v. Fitzharris, 521 F.2d 246, 249 (9th Cir.1975) (en banc) (plurality opinion). 159 Moreover, the impact of the DNA Act is not limited to persons in a conditional release status. It affects individuals who have completed their period of supervision, as well as some who have never been subject to that status. The data of some arrestees are now included in CODIS and there is little doubt that the collection of data from far more will soon be completed. In any event even probationers and parolees have full expectations of privacy once they have paid their dues to society and have completed their terms of conditional release. The plurality, however, has concluded that such a severe and fundamental disruption in the relationship between the offender and society, along with the government's concomitantly greater interest in closely monitoring and supervising conditional releasees, is in turn sufficient to sustain suspicionless searches of his person and property even in the absence of some non-law enforcement `special need' Ante, at 834-835. In other words, convicted offenders' reduced privacy expectations may last forever. 160 I respectfully disagree with the plurality's assessment of the privacy expectations held by individuals subjected to searches under the DNA Act. I conclude that despite probationers' and parolees' diminished expectations of privacy, those expectations they retain must be given sufficient weight in the balancing process.
161 I now turn to the government's interests in conducting the searches in question. The plurality has described these interests as enormous, overwhelming, and monumental. Certainly, one would think that such interests involve the prevention of a terrorist act, the defusing of a ticking bomb, the discovery of the missing weapons of mass destruction, or something similarly weighty. Not so. According to the plurality, these words describe the normal, everyday needs of law enforcement — preventing crimes, encouraging rehabilitation, and bringing closure to victims by solving old crimes. I agree that the government has a very strong interest in solving and deterring crime. But I disagree that the interests sought to be advanced by the DNA Act are anything other than the ordinary needs advanced in favor of every program designed to assist crime control. See supra, at 856-857 (describing the Act's primary purpose). 162 In order to make the government's interests appear stronger than they are, the plurality contends that searches pursuant to the Act serve the commendable purpose of ensuring that the innocent will not be wrongly convicted. See ante, at 839 n. 38. I would certainly hope that the Act would be used for such purposes. Recent experience has shown that DNA evidence can help exonerate the wrongfully convicted, 29 and I would be the first to applaud a statute that helped wrongfully accused or convicted individuals obtain DNA analysis for that worthy purpose. 163 Unfortunately, that is not the Act we review today. The DNA Act does nothing to assist the wrongfully accused or convicted. The Act provides no option for DNA testing to those who seek to prove their innocence, and no funding to states or localities to help provide DNA sampling when requested by those who contend that were wrongfully arrested or convicted. It simply requires the collection and maintenance of blood samples from those in our society the state believes to be the most likely to commit crimes. It is thus difficult to accept the government's representation of its concerns regarding the innocent. 164 It is undoubtedly true that were we to maintain DNA files on all persons living in this country we would make the resolution of criminal investigations easier. 30 The same would be true were we willing to sacrifice all of our interests in privacy and personal liberty. Those who won our independence chose, however, not to follow that course but instead to provide us with the safeguards contained in the Fourth Amendment. We as judges do not have the authority to sacrifice those constitutional protections. D. Summary 165 Were we to apply the totality of the circumstances analysis, I would hold that the balance of considerations makes the programmatic suspicionless searches unconstitutionally unreasonable. The invasions of privacy the Act authorizes are substantial; the probationers and parolees subjected to its provisions maintain reasonable expectations of privacy; and the government's interest, while significant, is no stronger than its ordinary interest in investigating and prosecuting crimes. On balance, the government's desire to create a comprehensive DNA databank must give way when weighed against the privacy interests at issue and the extent of the intrusion involved. 166 When democratic values are lost, society often looks back, too late, and says when did this happen — why didn't we understand before it was too late? Today's decision marks one of those turning points — a fatally unwise and unconstitutional surrender to the government of our liberty for the sake of security, and, should the plurality's theory ever become law, the establishment of a doctrine that would leave us without the legal tools to halt further abolition of our privacy rights. The compulsory extraction of blood samples and the maintenance of permanent DNA profiles of American citizens is, unfortunately, the beginning not the end. 1984 arrives twenty years later than predicted.