The following is an edited excerpt.
“I think this is perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this Court has heard in decades.” Justice Samuel Alito said from the bench Wednesday. “This is what is at stake: Lots of murders, lots of rapes that can be solved using this new technology that involves a very minimal intrusion on personal privacy. But why isn’t [police DNA sampling] the fingerprinting of the twenty-first century?”
Alito is the Supreme Court’s leading criminal-procedure hawk. But equally important, Alito is the Court’s leading futurist. He sees the Court’s role as peering into the future implications of changes in technology.
Read the full article here: The Supreme Court Sees the Future: 90-Minute DNA Matches, and Less Crime