Criminal Justice Organizational Trends Paper

Communication and Ethical Issues

Chrystal Barnes

CJA/444

March 20, 2017

Luis Martinez

Communication and Ethical Issues

        In a society where guilty until proven innocent, there is a lot of controversy when it comes to privacy. Thompson C. talks about in his article the rights of the suspects DNA. The DNA in this article is considered by defense attorneys to be “unorthodox” Thompson, C. (2007) in they in which it is collected. It is called “abandon DNA” Thompson, C. (2007). Abandon DNA is collected by an officer/investigator who will “watch” or follow the suspect and wait for them to spit out gum, saliva, or toss a cigarette butt onto the street, once this happens the officer will then use it to compare with the sample DNA they already have from the crime. The controversy with this type of collection is privacy, but it is believed the courts, that it is not an invasion of privacy, because you have degraded onto public property and have disposed of it which leads it to being public. This same concept is believed to be true when you throw out your trash. Theoretically once you have no need for your gum, cigarette butt, saliva, and/or trash and dispose of it, it is considered public property, which in term is fair game.

        You may ask the question well if this unorthodox method is allowed then are there any boundaries such as how long the DNA that was collected can be on file. The answer to that is really depending on the state you live in. For instance, “Though the state-level laws vary in terms of how long the DNA evidence can be kept – some, like California, allow it to be kept permanently, while other states require the information to be deleted if a suspect is not charged or found innocent” (Boehm, 2013, para.4).

        Then you may ask, can law enforcement use a person's DNA to match against other crimes unrelated to the one they initially obtained it for? The answer to this question is not as complexed as you may think it is. The answer would be yes. Once your DNA has been collected it is running through a federal and a local database. This database on the federal level is called CODIS. Again the argument can and has been that the person who is in suspicion of committing a crime where DNA is collected, is allowing the agencies of government to violate ones’ civil rights in privacy.  For example, a man who may match a description of a suspect in an investigation that is serious (rape, murder, assault, robbery, etc.) is walking down the street chewing a piece of gum being “surveillance by police” spits it out. The police then gather that same piece of gum and run it through the database of local and federal agencies. Now this person matches the description but is not a suspect because of lack of evidence, but due to the fact that once you dispose of that piece of chewing it is no longer your property, gives the police the right to obtain it. Because it is now public “property” the officer has the right to run that sample in the database to see if your DNA matches any other crime that has been committed.