ACLU Will Fight Katie's Law Expansion

Posted by Jim Spence on Monday, June 27, 2011
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Santa Fe New Mexican - The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico says it will challenge a law that takes effect July 1 requiring a DNA sample from all people booked into jail for an alleged felony. "We think the law overreaches by collecting sensitive, private information from people who still deserve a presumption of innocence," said Peter Simonson, the executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico. "By expanding the law to include people who are not even accused of a violent crime, the Legislature may have made it more vulnerable to a constitutional challenge," he said. It wasn't clear when the challenge might be filed. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Feel good legislation. That is all this is. And an attack on the rights of the "not proven guilty" (There is no such thing as innocent. Try proclaiming innocent instead of not guilty next time you go to court. And not guilty is not identical to innocent.)

No DNA should be taken until AFTER conviction. And ALL information should be destroyed/removed from the database once the guilty party has paid his/her debt. Anything more amounts to abuse and violates the rights of everyone.

In my system, murders, rapists, and pedophiles wouldn't have to worry about their DNA, cause they'd all be put to death. However, people need to pay attention to the fact that across the US, truly innocent men and women spend decades in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Our system is broken. People are abused but prosecutors so that prosecutors can cut notches on the handles of their guns. Points are given for convictions, right or wrong. Respecting rights is not being soft on crime. BUT doing what most people want done, that is convicting people on the basis of an arrest is a greater wrong.

Are there evil people out there? Of course. Is the expansion of this law going to stop them? No. And the problem with DNA is that law has to believe science in an era when science has been caught lying about much of what is true.

June 28, 2011 at 10:35 AM

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