Health & Fitness
Maryland Legislators Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Review DNA Law Ruling
Delegate Sam Arora (D-Montgomery) explains why he led a group of legislators to ask the Supreme Court to review a decision that struck down the state's law takes violent criminals off our streets.
Case Would Affect DNA Collection Laws in 27 States, Federal Government
Today, I was honored to lead a bipartisan group of 19 Maryland state legislators in asking the United States Supreme Court to review a ruling by Maryland’s highest court that struck down the state’s law permitting DNA collection from individuals charged with violent crimes and burglaries. Our amicus brief follows the State Attorney General’s petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court in King v. State. If review is granted by the Supreme Court, the outcome of the case could affect the federal government and 27 states with DNA collection laws similar to Maryland.
Our amicus brief also signaled their intent to use the 2013 legislative session to reauthorize the popular law, which is scheduled to sunset at the end of next year.
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Maryland’s law has taken rapists and other dangerous offenders off our streets, and we stand behind that. The Court of Appeals has put a great deal at risk by disregarding federal court rulings on this issue. With more than half the states using similar statutes, we need the Supreme Court to speak definitively.
In April, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled unconstitutional a 2008 amendment to the Maryland DNA Collection Act, which authorizes law enforcement to run DNA samples from charged offenders of violent crimes and certain burglaries through DNA databases. The Maryland court’s opinion jeopardizes the 71 rape, robbery, and other cold-case arrests that came as a result of DNA matches under the law since 2009, according to the Governor’s Office of Crime Control & Prevention.
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“Unfortunately, the Court of Appeals has severely and unjustifiably circumscribed the legislative authority of the General Assembly on this issue through its opinion in King,” we argue in our brief. “In so doing, the Court of Appeals has left the General Assembly incapacitated, unable to provide Maryland’s criminal justice system with a strongly supported tool found constitutional by courts throughout the country.”
The Maryland court’s decision puts it at odds with decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Ninth Circuits as well as the Virginia Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts stayed the Maryland court’s decision until the Supreme Court has determined whether it will accept review.
You can read your brief for yourself at http://www.scribd.com/doc/106181746/Maryland-Legislators-Brief-in-Support-of-DNA-Collection-Act.
