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muhly22222 -> RE: Supreme Court OKs DNA collection (6/3/2013 5:13:32 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: dcnovice
quote:
Kennedy wrote the decision, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Scalia was joined in his dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Interesting and unusual alignment of votes.
I'm actually not terribly surprised by the alignment. One thing I noticed from my crim pro class was the very high number of cases that Scalia, a putatively conservative justice, sided against the "conservative" law-and-order argument, while his otherwise conservative colleagues voted with the police. Like him or hate him (and both are fair), he is pretty consistent in his approach to the making decisions.
Kennedy is obviously the wildcard, so there should never be any surprise, no matter how he votes.
Breyer was a bit of a surprise, but I don't remember his opinions all that well anymore. He doesn't have quite the flair that Scalia does, so he doesn't stand out as much.
With respect to the actual decision of the Court, I think it was a correct decision under the current precedent. It's a minimally invasive identification procedure, similar to fingerprinting. If one is permissible, so is the other. I'm always ready to debate the use of data from people who are arrested but not convicted...to me, that would raise Constitutional issues.
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