IS PICKING UP AND DNA TESTING A CIGARETTE A 4TH AMENDMENT VIOLATION?
This is a really interesting decision by a California appellate court regarding what constitutes search and seizure. (All of which is a hot topic in general this week, what with TSA doing all that new searching and, you know, seizing). The Sac Bee has the story: In the first case of its kind in California, a state appellate court in Sacramento ruled Monday that a suspect in a criminal investigation has no expectation of privacy in a discarded item, and a DNA test of the item is not an unconstitutional search. The court upheld the murder conviction of a man snared 15 years after the crime by results of DNA testing on a cigarette butt he tossed on a sidewalk. Rolando N. Gallego’s lawyer challenged the second-degree murder conviction in Sacramento Superior Court, contending his client’s constitutional shield against warrantless searches was violated by a DNA test of saliva taken from the cigarette. But a three-justice panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal concluded that the test was f
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