Details: Maryland v. King

This morning Justice Kennedy announced the Courts opinion in Maryland v. King. By a vote of five to four, the Court held that when officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestees DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Justice Scalia filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.