Maryland v. King
United States Supreme Court
569 U.S. ___ (2013)
In 2009, Alonzo King (defendant) was arrested for an unrelated assault, and — as standard practice under Maryland law for serious offenses — police took a DNA sample with a cheek swab during booking. The sample matched DNA collected years earlier from an unsolved 2003 rape, leading to King's conviction for that crime. The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed, holding the cheek-swab procedure was an unreasonable search and seizure, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether, when officers make an arrest for a serious offense supported by probable cause and bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee's DNA is a legitimate police-booking procedure reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.