Former Penal Code section 290.2, as in effect in 1991, required persons convicted of specified sex offenses, and who were discharged or paroled from a state prison, county jail or other institution, to provide two specimens of blood and saliva. These samples were then to be submitted to the Department of Justice to perform a DNA analysis to be used only for law enforcement purposes. Appellant was convicted of a qualifying crime and required to provide the samples. The Court of Appeal rejected appellant’s claim that this procedure violates his Fourth Amendment rights. Here, appellant claimed that the seizure of his blood and saliva required the issuance of a warrant based on probable cause, and that the requirement could not be dispensed with unless a special exception to the warrant requirement existed. Without that demonstration, according to appellant, the court should not reach the interest-balancing test normally applied in Fourth Amendment analysis. In rejecting that analysis, the Court of Appeal found that this is a “special needs” situation beyond basic case-specific law enforcement which requires inter-balancing. It found the privacy interest of an inmate to be slight, and the intrusion to be slight, particularly under this statute where there was no discretion to be exercised as to whose blood and saliva should be sampled. Accordingly, where important governmental interests in solving unsolved crimes and preventing other crimes are implicated, and there are no particularized facts to present in a warrant, it is reasonable to dispense with the warrant requirement. Finally, there is no question that DNA testing is an efficient means of promoting the governmental interest at stake.
Case Summaries