 Hi, I'm David Cantor with the Law Offices of David Michael Cantor and welcome to my blog. Today's topic has to do with a state law in California which mandated DNA testing for all people who are arrested for felonies. Well this law was just recently struck down as unconstitutional based upon Fourth Amendment and unreasonable search and seizures. Now the judges who heard this case stated that this is not like fingerprint collection which they do whenever you're arrested because fingerprints are historically used for identification purposes and not solving crimes. Now I know I'm a criminal defense attorney and you probably expect I'm going to say this is a great thing because it protects privacy and it doesn't put you into a system just because you are arrested. Well I disagree with this. First of all if you're arrested they take your fingerprints and they run them in a database to see if lo and behold your fingerprint pops up at a murder scene or a rape scene and I don't have a problem with that. Same with DNA, you've been arrested, they take your DNA sample and they put it into the DNA database. You may be arrested for a felony possession of marijuana that's a class six for having a joint but lo and behold it turns out you're wanted in Long Island for the death of six women. I don't have a problem with that. So the fact that the state court in California struck this down I think it's ridiculous. I'm sure the California state court or Supreme Court will reverse this. Now the reason this is interesting is this September the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is going to re-hear a case involving DNA collection as a condition of pretrial release. Hopefully that will be upheld and again this will be the law. I really don't have a problem with the fact that once you're arrested they take your photograph and put it in a database. I don't have a problem with the fact that they take your fingerprints and I don't have a problem with the fact that they take your DNA. I don't have a problem that they check your fingerprints in a database and I don't have a problem that they in the future will use face recognition technology to see if the person they just arrested pops up somewhere on camera or video as committing another crime. I do think this is necessary and again the mere fact of a criminal defense attorney doesn't mean I'm going to go against this. I do think it's a good idea but that's just what I think. Tell me what you think.