mdnuts
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- May 28, 2014
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I was reading the case about where Clark Baldwin was arrested for the murder of 3 women almost 30 years before. What stood out to me (other than Baldwin's actions) was they were lead to Baldwin via a search of a commercial DNA company and found a familial match. I thought that seemed odd, while undoubtedly a good end result, you can't get much more of an expectation of privacy than your DNA. A search around brought me to this law review which was a similar situation.
An excerpt.
Some states like Maryland would collect your DNA and store it in their database if you were arrested for a crime (being charged or convicted didn't matter). In this instance, Baldwin hadn't submitted the DNA, not voluntarily or as a result of an arrest. The family member who did submit it didn't do so for the sake of being in a police search (voluntarily or otherwise) but did it for medical or ancestry reasons. As an American there is the right of protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures" (4th Amendment). Courts have long focused and watered down what the term reasonable means.
The article is an interesting read. Hopefully the police have enough evidence to still present the case against Baldwin if the DNA link was tossed out.
An excerpt.
The third-party doctrine rests on the assumption that in providing information to a third party, an individual considered the increased likelihood that the third party may, intentionally or otherwise, share that information. Therefore, in making the decision to provide information to a third party, the individual assumed this additional risk.
Some states like Maryland would collect your DNA and store it in their database if you were arrested for a crime (being charged or convicted didn't matter). In this instance, Baldwin hadn't submitted the DNA, not voluntarily or as a result of an arrest. The family member who did submit it didn't do so for the sake of being in a police search (voluntarily or otherwise) but did it for medical or ancestry reasons. As an American there is the right of protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures" (4th Amendment). Courts have long focused and watered down what the term reasonable means.
The article is an interesting read. Hopefully the police have enough evidence to still present the case against Baldwin if the DNA link was tossed out.