Supreme Court upholds DNA swabbing of people under arrest
By Pete Williams and Erin McClam, NBC News
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the police practice of taking DNA samples from people who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime, ruling that it amounts to the 21st century version of fingerprinting.
The ruling was 5-4. Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative, joined three of the court’s more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — in dissenting.
The five justices in the majority ruled that DNA sampling, after an arrest “for a serious offense” and when officers “bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody,” does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches.
The case arose from the arrest of a 26-year-old Maryland man, Alonzo King, in 2009 on a charge of second-degree assault. The police took a swab of DNA from his cheek, ran it through a database and matched it to an unsolved rape from six years earlier.
King was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for the 2009 assault. The Maryland Court of Appeals later reversed the rape conviction on the grounds that the DNA sample was an unreasonable search.
“Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes,” Scalia wrote in his dissent. “Then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane.”
In an allusion to the technique of taking a swab from the cheek, Scalia wrote: “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.”
The Maryland law restricts DNA swabbing to people arrested for certain violent crimes, but justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, worried during the oral argument that other laws might not be so restrictive. Roberts wondered why they couldn’t be applied to simple traffic stops.
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SFPD denies racial profiling in pot busts Posted By: Justin Berton
One day after a study by the American Civil Liberties Union reported that black people in San Francisco were more than four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as whites in 2010, the Police Department denied it was engaged in racial profiling.
The ACLU report, which was part of a national study that analyzed federal data from 2001 to 2010, found that San Francisco led California when it came to racial disparity in arrest rates. There are no differences between marijuana usage among whites and blacks, the study concluded.
The ACLU said that although arrests were not a high priority in some cities, including San Francisco, the racial disparity showed a “staggering racial bias.”
In 2010, 192 African Americans were arrested on marijuana possession charges in San Francisco, compared with 44 whites.
“The San Francisco Police Department does not racially profile,” the department said in a statement Wednesday. “No one is arrested in sufficient numbers for marijuana possession here in San Francisco to substantiate such a claim.”
The department noted that total misdemeanor arrests for marijuana dropped to 11 in 2011, the year after California lowered the penalty for marijuana possession of less than 1 ounce from a misdemeanor to an infraction. Chief Greg Suhr reviewed all 11 arrests and concluded that the marijuana charges were secondary to more serious offenses in all the cases, the department said.
Of the 11 suspects, five were African American, five were white and one was Latino, police said.
The arrests “were made using sound police procedure pertaining to criminal activity and not by racial profiling,” the department said.
The statement did not directly address the 2001-2010 data in the ACLU’s report. A police spokesman was not available for comment late Wednesday.
Man charged in 6-year-old Lay'la Jones killing wanted for questioning in girlfriend's death Brad Devereaux
SAGINAW, MI — Police are asking for the public's help in locating a Saginaw man wanted for questioning in the April 15 suspicious death of his 23-year-old girlfriend.
His and the victim's son was found wandering the streets near the house, according to the Saginaw Police Department, and police believe the child was left alone for hours after his mother had died.
Police are also looking for a 2002 Dodge Neon similar to the one pictured to the left.
The car they are looking for is a 4-door 2002 Neon, light blue to turquoise in color, with Michigan license plate 8HRP88, according to the Saginaw Police Department. The car is described as having some front-end damage, a rear spoiler, rear windows slightly tinted and a decorative cherry steering wheel cover and decorative cherries hanging from the rear-view window, police said.
In an unrelated case, Saginaw County District Court has an arrest warrant charging Lawrence with first-degree premeditated murder, conspiring to commit that crime, five counts of assault with intent to murder, single counts of discharging a firearm from a vehicle, carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, carrying a concealed weapon, and possessing a firearm as a felon, and nine counts of possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony-second offense in the Aug. 29 homicide of 6-year-old Layla Jones at 1115 Essling north of Norman on Saginaw's northeast side. Lawrence has been at large since the warrants were issued.
His last known address was 3217 Rust in Saginaw, according to a previous MLive wanted bulletin.
CrimeStoppers will pay up to $1,000 for information leading to his arrest
Michael D. Lawrence
Lay'la Jones
Missing New Orleans Teacher, Terrilynn Monette, Found Dead After 3 Months
by Christina Coleman for Global Grind Staff
Missing New Orleans Teacher, Terrilynn Monette, Found Dead After 3 Months
Terrilynn Monette, an educator who was nominated for "Teacher Of The Year" just hours before she disappeared in New Orleans.
She was last seen celebrating that nomination at a local bar. When she was too intoxicated to drive home, she slept in her 2012 black two-door Honda Accord. That was March 2.
Police followed up with leads and even questioned an unidentified man who was last seen talking to her in the parking lot. Authorities came up empty. But this weekend, an entire 98 days after Terrilynn Monette's disappearance, her car was found submerged in the Bayou St. John. Her badly decomposed body was inside.
Police had thought that Monette turned left, or northbound, at Marconi, on the edge of City Park, based on red-light camera footage investigators reviewed. But her car was found farther east, in waters just past the corner of Harrison and Wisner, suggesting she likely kept going straight instead, driving through City Park before -- for reasons still unknown -- she ended up in in Bayou St. John.
"Now that Ms. Monette's car has been found, we begin the second phase of this investigation," New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said in a statement. "Both homicide detectives and our fatality unit were on the scene today, so that they can pick up where (other) officers have left off and start finding out exactly how and why the car ended up where it did."
by Christina Coleman for Global Grind Staff
Completely Sober Man Arrested & Charged With A DUI Christina Coleman for Global Grind Staf
The 61-year-old retiree was arrested and charged with a DUI, even though his blood alcohol level came back a 0.00. And no, there was no glitch in the Breathalyzer test.“I can tell you're driving drunk by the look in your eyes.”Thorton was pulled over around 11 p.m. on his way to pick up his ER nurse wife. Officers in Surprise, Arizona said they witnessed him crossing the white line in his lane. That's when this happened:"He (the officer) goes, 'Well we're going to do a sobriety test.' I said, 'OK, but I got bad knees and a bad hip with surgery in two days.'"
The officer then made Thorton take a sobriety test.
"At one point, one of the officers shined the light in my eye and said, 'Oh, sorry,' and asked the other officer if he was doing it right,'" said Thornton.
Thornton said he was then placed in handcuffs and told to sit on the curb.
"I couldn't even sit on the ground like that and they knew it and I was like laying on the ground, then they put me in the back of an SUV and when I asked the officer to move her seat up 'cause my hip hurt she told me to stop whining," said Thornton.
At the station, his BAC test came back with all zeroes and a drug recognition expert was called in to examine Thorton. Of course, the expert determined that Thorton was completely sober.
“I would never have arrested you.” The expert wrote a statement, saying, “...in my opinion Jessie was never under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
But it was too late. Thorton's car had been impounded and the Arizona MVD had been notified. His license was suspended and he was ordered to take a drinking and driving class.
Thorton was eventually released from custody to his wife. The DUI charge was later dropped, but Thorton has filed a notice of claim against Surprise for $500,000. "This is a case of D-W-B, driving while black," said Thornton's attorney Marc Victor.
Man Is Killed After Trying To Rob Customers In Line for Lebron James shoes
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The Hunted And The Hated Documentary Reveals Racist NYPD Stop And Frisk Policy
Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy is being implemented on the city’s streets.
On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.
In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, “You want me to smack you?” When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a f*****g mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your f****n’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the f****n’ face.”
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