Should a victim's DNA be used against her as evidence of another crime?

My own leanings aside, this one seems like a juicy issue with two sides.

I get privacy rights, but I also get the interests of society in convicting criminals and not allowing the law to be "abused."

My gut feeling is, we shouldn't let guilty people go free just because they may have been victims in the past, but it kind of raises the question of whether a victim of a crime should report it to an indifferent and impartial deep state that might someday later use it against her.

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/09/this-police-departments-dna-collection-was-so-unethical-new-laws-will-likely-be-made-preventing-it-from-happening-again/

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bijouxbroussard · F

That’s a tough one. In the interests of justice, dna has freed innocent people—and even proven innocence posthumously. At the same time there are rights against self incrimination.

MistyCee

@bijouxbroussard But why are there rights against self incrimination? Its food for thought, but most of the better arguments against self incrimination relate to coerced confessions, which I'm not sure apply here.

SW-User

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/02/does-your-spit-have-fifth-amendment-rights.html

... The Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment reads that no “person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” But the courts have long interpreted this narrowly to mean that the Fifth Amendment protects suspects only from being forced to produce “testimonial or communicative” evidence. The Fifth Amendment does not protect suspects from being compelled to produce “real or physical evidence.” As Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “the prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material ....”

@MistyCee @bijouxbroussard

bijouxbroussard · F

@SW-User Thank you for the clarification. I wasn’t sure about the parameters.

SW-User

@bijouxbroussard I may be mistaken but I think you can also still be arrested if you refuse to take breathalyzer test during a traffic stop on suspicion of a DUI

MistyCee

@SW-User I respect Holmes, much as I do Tawney, Jefferson, Chase, Marshall, Madison , et al, and I even respect Scalia's attempt to to beatify them.

Holmes, in my personal experience, was a genius in terms of identifying issues and exploiting them, but his greatest virtue was never going beyond the case at hand.

bijouxbroussard · F

@SW-User Yes, that is so in my state.