Maryland v. King decided 5-4, allowing DNA swabs on arrest

The Court, per Kennedy, says it's like fingerprinting and photographing.

Justice Scalia authors the dissent, joined by Kagan, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor.

The opinion is here.

The issue presented to the Court was: "Whether the Fourth Amendment allows the states to collect and analyze DNA from people arrested and charged with serious crimes."

More to follow.

 In the meantime, check out SCOTOSBlog

UPDATE -- the intro of Scalia's dissent:

The Fourth Amendment forbids searching a person for evidence of a crime when there is no basis for believing the person is guilty of the crime or is in possession of incrimi nating evidence. That prohibition is categorical and with out exception; it lies at the very heart of the Fourth Amendment. Whenever this Court has allowed a suspicionless search, it has insisted upon a justifying motive apart from the investigation of crime.

It is obvious that no such noninvestigative motive exists in this case. The Court’s assertion that DNA is being taken, not to solve crimes, but to identify those in the State’s custody, taxes the credulity of the credulous. And the Court’s comparison of Maryland’s DNA searches to other techniques, such as fingerprinting, can seem apt only to those who know no more than today’s opinion has chosen to tell them about how those DNA searches actually work. 

And from the conclusion:

Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes; 

then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane 

(surely the Transportation Security Administration needs to know the “identity” of the flying public), 

applies for a driver’s license, or attends a public school. Perhaps the construction of such a genetic 

panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our

liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.

Update to yesterday's post on flooding in the Broward Federal Courthouse

Acting Chief Judge Donald Graham sent the letter below on Wednesday to the GSA regarding the flooding.  You can read the whole back and forth, but GSA's position is absurd -- that the flooding will be fixed by February 2014.

Graham Letter Re Courthouse

You can see the videos from the courthouse here.

It's time for a new federal courthouse in Broward...

...because it's raining INTO the current courthouse.  Literally:

SHOCKING!

This is more than absurd; it's unsafe.

Who has more power -- a King or a Federal District Judge?

My money is on the district judge.  But Judge Scola had an entertaining exchange with Joel Steinger in the Mutual Benefits case yesterday.  Curt Anderson reports:

The alleged leader of an $800 million South Florida insurance fraud scheme was found competent to stand trial Wednesday despite severe pain from a spinal cord ailment that requires him to take powerful drugs including morphine.

U.S. District Judge Robert Scola issued his ruling at a hearing Wednesday for 63-year-old Joel Steinger. Steinger was the top executive at Mutual Benefits Corp., which prosecutors say was a massive fraud scheme in which some 34,000 investors lost more than $800 million.

Steinger, seated in a wheelchair during the hearing, said he needs surgery to correct the spinal problem and complained loudly it would be unfair if he's forced to stand trial in September without the operation. Steinger said he cannot control his bowel movements or bladder and takes enough morphine "to choke a horse."

"I can't concentrate for five minutes because I'm all hopped up on drugs," Steinger told the judge. "And you're asking me to defend my life in a trial under these conditions? Do you think that's fair, your honor? I don't."

Scola, relying on a report by Bureau of Prisons mental health and drug experts, said there was no evidence to indicate Steinger suffered from mental problems or could not understand and take part in a trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Rochlin agreed.

"Simply put, the defendant is competent," she said.

The judge also said it's not within his power to order surgery for Steinger at the University of Miami, as he has requested, rather than at another hospital. Steinger is being held without bail until his trial and most of his assets were frozen long ago.

"I wish I were the king of the world, but I'm not," Scola said.

 

Ha! Okay, judge, maybe not the world, but of South Florida! 

Sample Size

This weekend, the NY Times was discussing that the Supreme Court was issuing a record number of unanimous opinions:

There has been a remarkable outbreak of harmony at the Supreme Court. Of the seven decisions issued in the last two weeks, six were unanimous.
There have been no dissents in more than 60 percent of the 46 cases decided so far this term. At this point last year, the justices were unanimous just 48 percent of the time, according to statistics compiled by Scotusblog. In the two terms before that, 52 percent of the cases decided by now were unanimous.

The harmony will dissipate in the final weeks of the term, which will probably conclude in late June. It is the divisive and hard-fought decisions that take the longest to produce, as the justices exchange draft opinions and respond to one other in evolving majority opinions, concurrences and dissents.

The marquee decisions of the term — on affirmative action, voting rights and same-sex marriage — will almost certainly be closely divided on the core issues. But the overall percentage of unanimous decisions is unlikely to drop to 40 percent, the average rate for full terms in recent years.

For now, consensus reigns. That is partly because some of the recent decisions were decidedly minor. One, concerning a towed car, would not have been out of place in small claims court or before Judge Judy. Another, about the meaning of the word “defalcation” in the Bankruptcy Code, must have made Justice Stephen G. Breyer, its author, wonder what he had done to deserve the assignment.

The end of the unanimity began yesterday with two 5-4 opinions.  From ScotusBlog:

In Trevino v. Thaler, in an opinion by Justice Breyer (but announced by Justice Kennedy, because Justice Breyer was absent), the Court held by a vote of five to four  that when a state’s procedural framework, by reason of its  design and operation, makes it highly unlikely in a typical case that a defendant will have a meaningful opportunity to raise on direct appeal a claim that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance, the good cause exception recognized in Martinez v. Ryan applies.

Opinion author in red. Dissenting Justices in grey.

In McQuiggin v. Perkins, in an opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Court held by a vote of five to four that actual innocence, if proved, serves as a gateway through which a habeas petitioner may pass whether the impediment to consideration of the merits of a constitutional claim is a procedural bar, as it was in Schlup v. Delo and House v. Bell, or expiration of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act statute of limitations, as in this case.

Opinion author in red. Dissenting Justices in grey.