Individual’s Rights Upon Arrest

A Civilian in a car accident with a Soldier

Question: Regardless of the circumstance Joe, when someone is arrested and there is a matter of whether it’s for DWI or any kind of DNA testing, etc., what are your rights? What are the individual’s rights?…

Question: Regardless of the circumstance Joe, when someone is arrested and there is a matter of whether it’s for DWI or any kind of DNA testing, etc., what are your rights? What are the individual’s rights?

Joe: Well, there are no rights anymore because the Supreme Court just ruled that if your state requires it, you could be swabbed for DNA upon an arrest. Which is in the court’s mind, the same as being fingerprinted. They take your fingerprints and they take your DNA. You become part of a database once you are arrested. That is arrest, that doesn’t mean conviction. I’m not sure about the rules of expunging it because you may be able to get your fingerprints back and maybe get them out of the system but I’m not sure that you will ever get your DNA back out of the data base. That is just interesting. There are a lot of civil rights concerns we have in society that are floating around. That is just one other consideration that you need to think about as part of our legal system.