Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

D.Md.: Cold case hit of DNA from a shooting victim 9 years ago was unreasonble seizure, but exclusionary rule not applied

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant was the subject of a cold case hit on his DNA after his DNA was taken years earlier after he showed up at an ER with a gunshot wound and the ER called the police. They arrived and seized defendant's clothing which was later subjected to DNA testing. The seizure of the clothing was permissible under plain view but not inevitable discovery or implied consent. "[U]nder the totality of the circumstances, the Court finds that the extraction of Davis' DNA profile for comparison with the evidentiary sample from the Neal murder was reasonable. The compelling government interest in potentially identifying the perpetrator in an ongoing homicide investigation outweighs the somewhat diminished privacy interests in his DNA that Davis retained...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on September 19, 2009 (boomark / email).