Court Sets Aside Ruling on Prisoner Blood Data

A federal appeals court on Monday set aside its October ruling that overturned a requirement that federal inmates and parolees give blood samples for the FBI’s forensic database.

Without commenting on the merits, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals announced that it would reconsider its decision in which a three-judge panel ruled that requiring blood samples from thousands of federal convicts was an illegal invasion of privacy.

The original decision, which had been stayed pending appeal, was viewed as a crime-fighting blow because blood samples culled from prisoners and stored in a DNA database maintained by the FBI can help solve crimes. The decision also threatened state laws that require prisoners to provide DNA samples, which are often forwarded to the FBI’s database.

The San Francisco-based court, acting on a petition by the Justice Department, did not indicate when it would rehear the case, this time with 11 judges.

When the court rehears a case with a larger panel, it usually overturns the original decision. The last time that happened was in September, when 11 judges overturned a three-judge panel that had blocked California’s gubernatorial recall election.

The court’s original decision in the case found that the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 amounted to a violation of inmates’ 4th Amendment protection against illegal searches.

The blood samples “violate the 4th Amendment because they constitute suspicionless searches with the objective of furthering law enforcement purposes,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the October decision.

The FBI’s database, open to law enforcement nationally, holds about 1.4 million genetic profiles, most of which came from prisoners and parolees.

The case that will be reconsidered by the appeals court concerns Thomas Kincade, a parolee previously convicted of a Los Angeles bank robbery, who refused to give a sample.

A lower court judge had upheld the law.