Are the police violating an individual’s right to privacy when the DNA of one family member is used to identify another family member as a murderer?
While there is no explicit mention in the Constitution of a right to privacy, the courts have interpreted the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th Amendments of the Bill of Rights as granting privacy to every individual in the U.S.
From U.S. Constitution Online:
_The Constitution does not specifically mention a right to privacy. However, Supreme Court decisions over the years have established that the right to privacy is a basic human right, and as such is protected by virtue of the 9th Amendment.
_The right to privacy has come to the public's attention via several controversial Supreme Court rulings, including several dealing with contraception (the Griswold and Eisenstadt cases), interracial marriage (the Loving case), and abortion (the well-known Roe v Wade case).
_In addition, it is said that a right to privacy is inherent in many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, such as the 3rd, the 4th's search and seizure limits, and the 5th's self-incrimination limit.
From WikiAnswers:
_Privacy rights are not explicitly stated in the United States Constitution, although the general notion of "privacy" is obvious in certain areas (most notably, the Fourth Amendment, which protects against searches of your person or home absent a warrent).
_It is important to remember that the U.S. Constitution doesn't give rights, but it protects rights which are "self-evident". In fact, the US Constitution doesn't claim to be a complete laundry list of ALL our "self-evident" rights. But it does protect those rights -- even those that do not explicitly appear in the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment of the Constitution specifically says this.
_That begs the question: What are those "unenumerated" rights? And is the "right to privacy" one of them?
_The U.S. Supreme Court has answered this in the affirmative. The previous answer, unfortunately, gives one the impression that the "right to privacy" was first acknowledged in Roe v. Wade. It was not. Recognition of the "right to privacy" goes back to at least 1897, where in Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford the Supreme Court wrote:
_"No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others…"
Civil libertarians, ever on the lookout for privacy violations, have clashed with law enforcement over the ways authorities intrude on individual privacy in criminal and terrorism investigations. My question is: Does the right to privacy trump the identification of criminals and terrorists?
Ever since DNA fingerprinting has come into use, the ACLU and other civil rights groups have sounded the alarm that this latest identification technology intrudes into the privacy of individuals. Now that the DNA of family members is being used to obtain the identity of a criminal, those alarms have become shriller. One law professor refers to familial DNA searches as ‘genetic surveillance’ and, along with other familial search protesters, claims that because the technique will impact a disproportionate number of blacks, it is a form of racial profiling.
Here are some excerpts from a New York Times report on how a familial DNA search led to the arrest of a notorious serial killer and the controversy stirred up by the use of this technique:
‘GRIM SLEEPER’ ARREST FANS DEBATE ON DNA USE
by Jennifer Steinhauer
The New York Times
July 8, 2010
LOS ANGELES — The arrest in the case of the "Grim Sleeper" — a serial killer who terrorized South Los Angeles for two decades — has put one of the hottest controversies in American law enforcement to its first major test.
Only two states, Colorado and California, have a codified policy permitting a so-called familial search, the use of DNA samples taken from convicted criminals to track down relatives who may themselves have committed a crime. It is a practice that district attorneys and the police say is an essential tool in catching otherwise elusive criminals, but that privacy experts criticize as a threat to civil liberties.
This week, law enforcement struck a significant blow for the practice when the Los Angeles Police Department used it to arrest a man who they say murdered at least 10 residents here over 25 years. It is the first time an active familial search has been used to solve a homicide case in the United States.
[Former LAPD motor pool mechanic] Lonnie D. Franklin Jr., 57, was charged Thursday with 10 counts of murder and one of attempted murder after the state DNA lab discovered a DNA link between evidence from the old crime scenes and that of Mr. Franklin’s son, Christopher, who was recently convicted of a felony weapons charge.
The information developed from the state’s familial search program suggested that Christopher Franklin was a relative of the source of the DNA from the old crime scenes. The police confirmed the association of Lonnie Franklin through matching of DNA from a discarded pizza slice. The match provided the crucial link in a seemingly unsolvable crime that struck terror and hopelessness throughout one of the city’s poorest areas for years.
The arrest in the protracted, gory case could settle the internal debate among lawmakers and the law enforcement agencies across the country currently considering the use of familial search, evidence law experts said. California is awaiting a court ruling on whether its DNA database can be expanded to include people who have been arrested.
The Los Angeles case "shows why it can be tremendously useful in cases that seem pretty dead and hard to crack," said Jennifer Mnookin, a law professor and evidence expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. "So therefore we will very likely see an increasing use of these techniques, and at a minimum one hopes it is done in a sensitive way that is thoughtful and attentive to the concerns" of its critics, she said.
At least some of those critics remain skeptical.
"Familial searching is a tool, and at this point it is a very imprecise tool," said Michael Risher, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who added there was the possibility of innocent people being harassed in the pursuit of a crime. "It has the potential to invade the privacy of a lot of people," he said.
Those who oppose the technique argue that there are inherent privacy concerns, and that it serves, in essence, as a form of racial profiling because a higher proportion of inmates are members of minorities.
"I can imagine lots of African-American families would think it is not fair to put a disproportionate number of black families under permanent genetic surveillance," said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University who has written about this issue.
The Grim Sleeper began his killing of women (and one man) in South Los Angeles in 1985, shooting his victims and leaving them in alleyways and Dumpsters. The killer stopped in 1988, then started again in 2002 [Hence the name ‘Grim Sleeper'].
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