States can routinely collect DNA samples when people are arrested for a serious crime, the U.S. Supreme Court said, limiting privacy rights and giving police a powerful investigative tool for solving old crimes.
The justices, voting 5-4, reinstated Alonzo Jay King Jr.’s conviction for a 2003 Maryland rape, a crime police solved only by matching DNA collected from King when he was arrested on an unrelated assault charge six years later.
The ruling is the court’s first on the privacy of genetic information. The federal government and at least 26 states allow DNA collection at arrest and more may now adopt the practice.
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