Matt Zapotosky reports:
Maryland’s top law enforcement officials are pushing back against a recent Court of Appeals decision that prohibits DNA collection from suspects charged — but not yet convicted — of violent crimes, saying the ruling will allow dangerous criminals to go undetected by authorities.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and police chiefs and prosecutors from the D.C. suburbs to Baltimore County are urging the state’s attorney general to challenge last week’s Alonzo Jay King Jr. v. State of Maryland decision, which found that swabbing criminal suspects for DNA samples after they are charged is a violation of the suspects’ constitutional rights.
Read more in the Washington Post.
Given how many states now legalize such DNA swabbing, the Maryland decision was a welcome one. But will it survive an appeal? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.