Opinion ID: 2303018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Maryland DNA Collection Act

Text: The Maryland DNA Collection Act was enacted in 1994. The portions of the current statute challenged by Appellant were added in 2008. [13] 2008 Md. Laws 337. The stated purpose of the statute is to analyze and type the genetic markers contained in or derived from the DNA samples; to assist an official investigation of a crime; to identify human remains; to identify missing persons; and for research and administrative purposes, including the development of a population database [14] and to aid in quality assurance. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl.Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-505. The 2008 amendments affected primarily § 2-501(i), Definitions [15] and § 2-504, Collection of DNA Samples. [16] 2008 Md. Laws 337. The amendments purport to allow the State to collect DNA samples from individuals arrested for crimes (or attempted crimes) of violence or burglary prior to being found guilty or pleading guilty. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl.Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-504(a)(3). DNA samples are collected from arrestees when the individual is charged (or at a correctional facility if the arrestee is in custody) by an authorized collector trained in the collection protocols used by the Maryland State Police Crime Laboratory. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl.Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-504(c). Samples may be collected with reasonable force, if necessary, and are mailed to the Maryland State Police Crime Laboratory within 24 hours of collection. Md.Code Regs. 29.05.01.04(C) & (M) (2011). The samples are not tested or placed in the statewide DNA system until the first scheduled arraignment of the arrestee, or earlier if the arrestee gives consent. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl. Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-504(d). DNA samples are analyzed in accordance with FBI standards and CODIS requirements. Md.Code Regs. 29.05.01.09(A) (2011). In the present case, King's DNA samples were sent to an approved vendor laboratory for analysis. While the specific type of scientific analysis to be employed is not prescribed by the statute, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method is used commonly by laboratories to analyze DNA samples. Mary McCarthy, Am I My Brother's Keeper?: Familial DNA Searches in the Twenty-first Century, 86 Notre Dame L.Rev. 381, 384 (2011). In DNA analyses performed to comply with FBI/CODIS standards, PCR is used to replicate 13 core short-tandem-repeat loci. Id. These 13 loci were chosen by the FBI for CODIS, in response to congressional concern over privacy protections, because they are considered non-coding DNA that are thought not to reveal private information. [17] H. Rep. 106-900(I), at 27 (2000) (codified at 42 U.S.C. §§ 13701-14223 (2012)) (stating that the records do not reveal information relating to any medical condition or other trait). Once the DNA sample is analyzed, the DNA record (a numerical representation of the information at each loci) is uploaded to the statewide searchable DNA electronic database or the FBI CODIS database. No identifying information, criminal history, photographs, or fingerprints are stored supposedly alongside the DNA record in either DNA database. CODIS and DNIS Fact Sheet, Fed. Bureau of Investigation, http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/codis/codis-and-ndis-fact-sheet (last visited 19 April 2012). When the DNA database produces a match (a hit) between an arrestee's sample and one stored previously in a database, the Maryland State Police notify the law enforcement officer who provided the sample. The original sample hit may be used thereafter only as probable cause to obtain a warrant to obtain a second sample and is not admissible as evidence at trial. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl. Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-510. If an arrestee is not convicted of the charge or charges which lead to his/her qualifying arrest(s), the DNA samples and records are required to be destroyed or expunged by the authorities. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl.Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-511(a). There is no expungement allowed, however, if the precipitating charge or charges against an arrestee are placed on the stet docket or the arrestee received probation before judgment. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl.Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-511(2). The Act provides also for penalties for misuse of DNA records, unauthorized testing of DNA samples, or wilful failure to destroy DNA samples. Md.Code (2003, 2011 Repl.Vol.), Pub. Safety Art., § 2-512. In Raines, 383 Md. at 25, 857 A.2d at 33, a plurality of this Court upheld the constitutionality, against a Fourth Amendment challenge, of the then-extant DNA collection statutory scheme, which, prior to the 2008 amendments, provided for collection of DNA samples only from individuals convicted of felonies, fourth-degree burglary, or breaking and entering into a vehicle. The Court, however, was divided deeply in reaching that result. The plurality opinion was authored by Judge Cathell. Two members of the four judge majority authored separate concurring opinions. Raines was convicted of two separate robberies committed in 1996. In 1999, while serving a sentence in prison for a crime unrelated to the robberies, his DNA was collected pursuant to the Act as it then existed, because the 1996 robberies were qualifying felonies. Raines, 383 Md. at 5 n. 5, 857 A.2d at 22 n. 5 (plurality opinion). In 2002, the DNA profile from a 1996 unsolved rape was uploaded to the statewide database and found to match Raines's DNA profile collected in 1999. Raines, 383 Md. at 6, 857 A.2d at 22 (plurality opinion). Using the DNA database hit as probable cause, the State obtained a search warrant to obtain a saliva sample from Raines in February 2003. Raines, 383 Md. at 6-7, 857 A.2d at 22 (plurality opinion). As a result of the second DNA profile match and the testimony of the 1996 rape victim, a grand jury returned an indictment against Raines for first- and second-degree rape and robbery. Raines, 383 Md. at 7, 857 A.2d at 22 (plurality opinion). Prior to his trial on the rape charges, Raines moved to suppress the DNA evidence, asserting that the original search was unconstitutional. Raines, 383 Md. at 7, 857 A.2d at 23 (plurality opinion). The motions court agreed. Id. The plurality opinion, on appeal, reversed the suppression of the evidence, noting that nearly every federal and state court that had decided an analogous question upheld against Fourth Amendment attack the collection of DNA from convicted felons. Raines, 383 Md. at 12, 857 A.2d at 25 (plurality opinion). Using the balancing test for determining whether a search is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, the plurality upheld the constitutionality of the Maryland DNA Collection Act, as applied to convicted felons. Raines, 383 Md. at 18, 857 A.2d at 29. On the privacy interest side of the scales of the balancing test, the Court considered Raines's status as a convicted and incarcerated person as one with severely diminished expectation of privacy. Raines, 383 Md. at 25, 857 A.2d at 33 (plurality opinion). The plurality opinion diluted further Raines's expectation of privacy by crediting that the purpose of the DNA collection was to identify convicted felons; no incarcerated individual has an expectation of privacy in his or her identity. Id. The Court distinguished the interest in searching for identification from searching ordinary individuals for the purpose of gathering evidence against them in order to prosecute them for the very crimes that the search reveals. Id. Using the Knights test, the Court concluded that there is no reason why a search cannot be reasonable absent an individualized suspicion in the limited circumstances of this case, where the individual's expectation of privacy was even more limited than in Knights, the government intrusion, a buccal swab, was minimal at most and the government objective is as strong as in Knights. Raines, 383 Md. at 17, 857 A.2d at 29 (plurality opinion). A government interest highlighted in Raines was to identify recidivists, persons involved with crimes, and unidentified bodies. 383 Md. at 21, 857 A.2d at 31 (plurality opinion). Judge Raker's concurring opinion disagreed with the plurality opinion as to its conclusion of the severely limited expectation of privacy a convicted felon has in his/her bodily fluids, but upheld the statute based on her acceptance of the analogy between fingerprints and DNA profiles as providing purely identifying information. Raines, 383 Md. at 44-45, 857 A.2d at 45 (nodding to the State's assertion that a DNA profile is just a series of numbers, similar to a social security number). In a separate concurring opinion, Judge Wilner criticized the plurality opinion's characterization of the State's interest in the DNA as simply identification, calling it misleading even to suggest, much less hold, that this program is not designed for the predominant purpose of providing evidence of criminality. Raines, 383 Md. at 51, 857 A.2d at 49. He conceded, however, that convicted criminals have a high rate of recidivism and that DNA's reliability serves the government's interest in identification in the same way as fingerprints and photographs do. Raines, 383 Md. at 51-52, 857 A.2d at 49 (Wilner, J., concurring). In our next relevant case to consider the Fourth Amendment implications of the Act, Williamson v. State, 413 Md. 521, 526, 993 A.2d 626, 629 (2010), a woman told police in 1994 that Williamson had raped her. A sexual assault examination was performed and vaginal swab collected (but no DNA was analyzed). Id. Williamson entered ultimately an Alford plea to battery in the case. Id. In 2002, a different woman told police that an unknown assailant raped her, a sexual assault forensic examination was performed, and a vaginal swab was collected. Williamson, 413 Md. at 526, 993 A.2d at 629. The DNA was analyzed and uploaded to the database, but there were no DNA profile matches. Williamson, 413 Md. at 526-27, 993 A.2d at 629-30. In 2005, Anne Arundel County Police received a financial grant to be used to solve cold cases. Williamson, 413 Md. at 527, 993 A.2d at 630. Pursuant to the grant, the police analyzed the vaginal swab from the 1994 alleged rape, which resulted in a match to the DNA profile in the 2002 rape. Id. Police suspected Williamson of both rapes. Id. After being arrested on an unrelated open warrant and while he was held in a police interrogation room, Williamson was given a McDonald's meal [18] by the police. Id. He drank from the drink cup and left the debris behind when he was taken from the room. Id. The police recovered the discarded cup and swabbed it for DNA. Id. The DNA thus obtained was analyzed and the results uploaded to the database, yielding a match to the specimens obtained from the 1994 and 2002 rapes. Williamson, 413 Md. at 528, 993 A.2d at 630. Williamson was indicted by a grand jury for charges stemming from the 2002 rape. Williamson, 413 Md. at 528, 993 A.2d at 631. Applying the two-part test from Katz, the Court concluded that Williamson abandoned the McDonald's cup in the police station and, therefore, could expect reasonably that the police might collect and investigate the cup. Williamson, 413 Md. at 536-37, 993 A.2d at 635. Williamson argued that, even if the cup was seized lawfully, the analysis of his DNA sample constituted a second and subsequent search and seizure for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, which required a warrant. Williamson, 413 Md. at 539, 993 A.2d at 637. In dicta, the Court suggested that [h]ad the police compelled Williamson to give a DNA sample as a pre-trial detainee, Williamson's argument may have had some weight. Williamson, 413 Md. at 540, 993 A.2d at 637. Relying on the declaration in Raines that DNA profiles produced under the authority of the Maryland DNA Collection Act provide identification of the person only, rather than being concerned with the vast amount of genetic information contained within the actual DNA sample, the Court concluded that, because Williamson abandoned the cup, there was no Fourth Amendment search implicated by the analysis of the DNA sample. Williamson, 413 Md. at 547, 993 A.2d at 641 (analogizing the abandoned DNA on the cup to a garbage bag left outside the curtilage of a home). Most recently, in Raynor v. State, 201 Md.App. 209, 29 A.3d 617 (2011), our colleagues on the Court of Special Appeals tackled another facet of analyzing a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's DNA under Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Appellant Raynor became a suspect in an unsolved rape case and was asked by State Police to come to the local barracks to talk about the investigation. Raynor, 201 Md.App. at 214-15, 29 A.3d at 620. The police asked Raynor for a DNA sample; he refused. Raynor, 201 Md. App. at 215, 29 A.3d at 621. During the interview, however, Raynor rubbed repeatedly his hands up and down the armrests of the chair in which he was seated. Id. After the interview, the police swabbed the arm-rests and obtained a viable DNA sample that, once analyzed, matched the sample taken from a rape kit obtained from the victim. Raynor, 201 Md.App. at 215, 29 A.3d at 621. The trial court refused, on Raynor's motion, to suppress the DNA evidence. Raynor, 201 Md.App. at 216, 29 A.3d at 621-22. On appeal, the thrust of Raynor's argument (similar to Williamson's, supra ) was that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the DNA within his skin cells, despite the latter having been gathered lawfully by the police from the arm-rests. Raynor, 201 Md.App. at 217, 29 A.3d at 622. The Court of Special Appeals, relying principally on the reasoning of Judge Raker's concurring opinion in Raines, concluded that even if appellant could demonstrate a subjective expectation of privacy in his DNA profile, he nonetheless had no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in it because it was used for identification purposes only. Raynor, 201 Md.App. at 222, 29 A.3d at 625. The intermediate appellate court reasoned that collection of the DNA from the chair was analogous to collection of a latent fingerprint and, therefore, was not a constitutionally-protected search. Id.