DNA

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Maryland law giving police the right to collect DNA from people arrested for – but not convicted of – violent crimes.…

A divided Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that it's constitutional for police to take DNA swabs from suspects who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime. The court compared such DNA sampling to fingerprinting when a suspect is booked.

Once a person is arrested it is not unreasonable for police to collect DNA, just as they collect fingerprints, the court says. In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia and three others say that isn't so.

The case was an early win for Governor Martin O'Malley: an expansion of Maryland's DNA database to include all arrestees, hoping to match suspects to…