Balancing the privacy rights of convicted offenders and the rights of the accused to a defense (Christine Funk, Minnesota Board of Public Defense Trial Team)

State and Federal DNA databanks are expanding at an alarming rate. A crime prevention tool that was originally intended only to track the most dangerous convicted felons, police departments and other law enforcement agencies across the country have begun collecting and permanently storing DNA from arrestees and other innocent persons. This trend not only represents a grave threat to privacy and the 4th Amendment, but it also turns the legal notion that a person is "innocent until proven guilty" on its head.

Materials

Presentation

DH Kaye. Please, let's bury the junk: The CODIS loci and the revelation of private information. Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy. 2007;102:70-81.

T Simoncelli. Dangerous Excursions: The Case Against Expanding Forensic DNA Databases to Innocent Persons. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Summer 2006.

T Simoncelli and S Krimsky. A New Era of DNA Collections: At What Cost to Civil Liberties? American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. August 2007.