Proposed bill would permit DNA samples to be taken before conviction
A bill is floating around in the state legislature would permit South Carolina to take DNA samples from anyone charged with a felony punishable by at least five years. The DNA sample would be taken when the person is arrested, even though the person has not been convicted of any crime.
I don't ordinarily agree with Governor Mark Sanford, but last year Sanford vetoed the same bill, saying that taking such personal information without a court order violates their civil liberties. Forcing persons who have not even been convicted of a crime to provide a DNA sample is outrageous, and it is just the most recent of many steps down the slippery slope towards a police state. The next step will be requiring every person to submit a DNA sample to law enforcement, perhaps at birth.
Programs such as this are more and more common throughout the country. Ryan Singel at Wired.com wrote yesterday that the federal government is now permitted under an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 to collect DNA samples from any citizen arrested (but not convicted) for any crime, and from any non-citizen detained by federal agents. He reports that the feds will be collecting about one million DNA samples a year under this new program, and how the sheer size of the database that the feds are putting together makes for a real possibility that more innocent persons will be accused of crimes based on faulty DNA matches.
I understand the desire for bigger and better law enforcement, and the need to catch the bad guy. But our rights to be free from unreasonable invasion of privacy under the South Carolina Constitution and to freedom from unreasonable search seizure under the United States Constitution and the S.C. Constitution are just as important. We do not have to sacrifice one in favor of the other.
