Court OKs DNA tests for federal parolees

By DAVID KRAVETS
The Associated Press

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Ruling 6-5, an 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals parted course with a three-judge panel's 2-1 decision in October that said the law was an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.

The larger panel declared that parolees give up some of their rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure as a condition of being released from prison early.

The outcome mirrors five other circuit courts that have addressed the issue and leaves intact the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000.

The San Francisco-based court's original decision had threatened to derail the federal act and similar laws adopted in most states.

The samples are turned over to the FBI, which analyzes the results and places them in a databank open to law enforcement nationally.

Mary Knox, the attorney in the case representing a paroled bank robber who did not wish to give blood, said she will appeal to the Supreme Court.

Writing for the majority, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote that it is a "well-established principle that parolees and other conditional releasees are not entitled to the full panoply of rights and protections possessed by the general public."

Five of the six judges in the majority ruled that the minimal intrusion of blood being drawn, combined with the government's interest in battling crime, were the major factors supporting their decision.

The judges said they were considering those factors only as they applied to federal inmates getting out of prison early or to those spared incarceration in exchange for being placed on parole.

But Judge Stephen Reinhardt, in one of the three written dissents in the court's 112-page opinion, said that same rationale could give the government the right to bypass the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and demand that everyone give a blood sample to the authorities.
 
"Under the rationales they espouse ... all Americans will be at risk, sooner rather than later, of having our DNA samples permanently placed on file in federal cyberspace," Reinhardt wrote.

The Justice Department did not return calls seeking comment.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether compulsory searches of the bodies of parolees — in this case mandatory blood drawing — require a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed another crime.