In New York, Niagara County Court Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza has issued a controversial ruling that police can taser a suspect who refuses to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. In this case, Ryan S. Smith sought to suppress DNA evidence that linked him to two crimes because of the use of the force against him. When told of a court order to obtain a second sample for DNA testing, Smith reportedly stated “You are gonna have to Taser me if you want my DNA.” That apparently sounded like a pretty good idea to the officers in the room.
Ryan is charged with first-degree robbery, burglary, second-degree kidnapping and other crimes stemming from a pair of incidents in 2006. This includes a Christmas Eve holdup of a gas station and a home invasion where he alleged tied up children with duct tape. Police were trying to match DNA evidence from a soda can and a glove at these crime scenes. This is the second such sample that the police sought due to mishandling of the first sample.
Last fall, Smith refused to comply with an order to give a sample. He was stunned and then police took a swab from inside his mouth. What is most interesting is that The Buffalo News reported that officers were told to “use any means necessary” to collect the sample. It is a good thing that Ryan did not say anything about getting a sample “over my dead body.” The reference by Buffalo News conflicts with the account of one supervisor who says that he gave them authority to use minimal force.
Thomson, McDonell, Crime Scene Unit Officer Jason G. Sykes and Detective James C. Galie Jr. testified on their actions. However, Officer Ryan G. Warme was not available — he is in jail accused by federal authorities of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, wire fraud and other counts.
I do agree with the officers that trying to pry open the inmates mouth presents a risk to them and could actually cause more injury to the subject. However, the usual response to such a refusal is to hold the individual in contempt. This ruling says that, without any threat to their safety, police can use physical force to force submission. Could police club a prisoner until her submitted?
As discussed in this prior column, sniper John Allen Muhammad was subjected to the same punishment for failing to yield to demands for a sample. Muhammad objected to a medical test that had not been ordered by the court or discussed with his attorney. In response to his refusal to cooperate, the guards activated a stun belt that sent a powerful electrical charge through his body.
The use of force as punishment can create a dangerous slippery slope. Under this theory, inmates could be equipped with stun belts and subjected to shock punishment for a failure to yield to such demands. Officers can clearly use physical force to hold down an inmate while, for example, blood is being withdrawn. They can taser the inmate if he turns violent. However, this ruling suggests that you can taser in response to a refusal to change attitudes and force compliance.
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I FEEL THAT EVERY GOVERMENT OFFICIAL SHOULD BE THE FIRST TO SUBMIT DNA AND BE ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PEOPLE FOR THIS WOULD BE THE FIRST STEP INTO FINDING OUT OUR HERITAGE AND WHO IS REALLY YOUR CHILDS FATHER, WHO KILLED THE KENNEDYS, M L KING,M MONROE ECT.. YES LETS START AT THE TOP AND WORK OUR WAY DOWN TO THE PEOPLE AMEN BET WE WOULD REWRITE HISTORY!! oh yea don’t forget to use the teaser if they say no. PLEASE ON STATE LEVEL START WITH THE POLICE EVEN THOSE RETIRED.
i think its time to remove some people from the bench and out of government office if things have gone all wrong since they took office remove them if they are for one group and not the general populous get rid of them if they disrespect our top white house leader get rid of them. if they are selling our country and jobs get rid of them. if they are tring to push our country back to the nasty pass birth control slavery(under employment shipping jobs over seas) get rid of them it is time to clean house and show the world that we the American people will not coward down in any fashion. we do not trust you or those appointed that would take away our ANY of our constitutional rights. HEAR THIS ROAR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN PERFORMING IN FRONT OF THE CAMARA WE HAVE WATCHED YOU PERFORM YELL PROFANITY DISREPECT OUR LEADER TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS OUR JOBS OUR HOMES OUR FREEDOMS ALL WHILE YOU VACATION WITH YOUR FAMILY ALL OVER THE WORLD IN 50 THOUSAND DOLLAR SUITS WITH 10 VACATION HOMES. ALL WHILE BANKING OUR MONEY OFF SHORE IN SECRET ACCOUNTS. GOD TRULEY DOES NOT LIKE WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND NITHER DO THE HARD WORKING {TRING TO FIND DESENT ENPLOYMENT HOUSING HEALTH CARE SUPPORT} AMERICANS. AMERICA WILL TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY FROM THOSE WHO ARE BLATINLY TRAITORS TO ALL THIS COUNTRY HAS DOES AND WILL ALWAYS STAND FOR ! that’s just an opinion pray someone is listening.
“However, this ruling suggests that you can taser in response to a refusal to change attitudes and force compliance.” -Jonathan Turley
Our “brave, new world” isn’t going to be a pretty place, once fully formed.
Bah, have fun with your system, it’s going to break under your feet. You will be hurt very badly in the resulting fall.
Heil Hitler.
lottakatz writes:
I’m watching Morning Joe- and you don’t want to get me talking about Joe S.- but he just played the dash-cam of the 72yo granny being tazed and Joe, his co-host and 2 guests were just horrified. Joe thinks the policeman should be fired. Is it me or is Joe mellowing? I’m kind of surprised he didn’t say it was the granny’s fault for having a bad attitude.
Well, Joe has reverted true to form. My Senantor, McCaskill, is on and she and everyone else is yapping AGAINST a single payer plan. Thank Ghod! 6:30am is just too early in the day to start questioning ones perceptions about the universe.
Good morning all, have a safe commute and a great day
yeah. you know I saw that too — and don’t get me started on Joe either. This is not the ideal way for me to get my day of political theater started, but at least I get it out of the way early.
did the cop have a woman who was really unreasonable on his hands, who looked as if she was going to step into traffic? was he, as his supervisor said, just keeping her safe? this cop is the trainer of the taser program.
claire mccaskill is such a disappointment. what part of “you don’t have to give up what you have if you don’t want to” do people not understand?
46 million americans do not have health care. they are pretty much forced to go without unless they use the local ER at a rate of around $750.00/hr. we spend $10 on senior health care for very dollar we spend on children. both populations are critically under served. if I had to go out on the open market to get health insurance I’d be in the ER too as am uninsurable on the open market.
even more disturbing are threats coming from Lindsay Graham to shut down the Senate unless pictures of torture victims taken between 2001 and like yesterday are allowed to be published.
let him and mitch mcconnell knock themselves out but why all the concern about future acts of terror? most other countries have experienced these for decades and they have not become this hysterical. if terrorists want us no use of pictures or speech will stop them. these pictures are just an embarrassment to them. they should be.
I’m watching Morning Joe- and you don’t want to get me talking about Joe S.- but he just played the dash-cam of the 72yo granny being tazed and Joe, his co-host and 2 guests were just horrified. Joe thinks the policeman should be fired. Is it me or is Joe mellowing? I’m kind of surprised he didn’t say it was the granny’s fault for having a bad attitude.
Well, Joe has reverted true to form. My Senantor, McCaskill, is on and she and everyone else is yapping AGAINST a single payer plan. Thank Ghod! 6:30am is just too early in the day to start questioning ones perceptions about the universe.
Good morning all, have a safe commute and a great day
Very well put, Jill. I have also enjoyed the adrenalin rush of vigilante justice in a fictional setting. For example, I remember secretly enjoying “Billy Jack,” arguably one of the worst movies ever made. But it is becoming increasingly acceptable in real life. The killing at the Oklahoma pharmacy last week is a great example of what you wrote about.
Jill,
That was nice of you to say. It is good to point out what is right. A lot of times, I get stuck in whats wrong rather than focusing on the good. It was a pleasure to read you well though out response.
Mike A.,
That was a very thoughtful piece. This is tangentially related to what you wrote but I heard a lawyer in Philadelphia, Christine Flowers, who wrote a column saying how she was conflicted about vigilante justice in the case of a man who was thought to be a rapist. Pictures of the man were posted in the neighborhood and a group of men ran the person who looked like the pictures down and beat the crap out of him. Ms. Flower’s column said part of her wanted to cheer that street “justice” because she didn’t live in a neighborhood where the police were unresponsive to the needs of the citizens.
If the police are unresponsive to the needs of the citizens, which I agree they are, this is not an argument for “street justice”, it is an absolute requirement of the state to step forward and do their job.
It horrified me that Ms. Flowers said she was conflicted. I see all those video games and movies, some of which are sponsored by the DOD showing vigilanti justice as a moral good. Vigilante justice is what Al Queda does and it’s how our govt. responded to terrorism. In each case, both groups claim they may act in any horrific way they want because their cause is just. They claim there is no law except the law they make for themselves.
In this case to tolerate a group of men chasing someone who looks like a picture (and it probably was the correct man, but that wasn’t known to the men) shows how facile/normal this type of thing appears to people now. I do think that torture, as seen on TV and video games, as done by our own govt. along with the absence of taking justice seriously as a society has undermined people’s ideas of right and wrong. This is no different than the times of lynching, where this brutal behavior was accepted as a right of the powerful over the powerless. Now our powerful class fails to hold accountable their own, yet they turn the authorities loose on the people, or fail to help them by ignoring both law and a fair criminal justice system.
We must take back the rule of law in this nation. We must provide for policing as a service, ie: peace officers and we must provide an actual, functional, fair system of justice. The corruption and cruelty we see everywhere starts at the top and that is where it must end.
If Judge Sperrazza’s ruling is not appealed, I’ll be surprised. If it is not reversed, we all have reason for real concern. The taser has become to law enforcement what waterboarding became to the CIA, an instrument for random coercion. In my opinion there is a direct relationship between public acceptance of torture and the indiscriminate use of tasers. It is as though we had decided that suspicion is sufficient justification for state sanctioned violence. There is no substantive difference between tasering an individual for refusing to “voluntarily” submit a DNA sample and tasering an individual for refusing to identify himself. The logical next step is the use of tasers in “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Those who are not offended will fall back on the “if you don’t like it, don’t break the law” justification, a rationale sufficient to excuse whatever is done to anyone in police custody. One of the most important reasons for changing the face of the Supreme Court is restoration of the concept of due process and its demands. That requires justices who understand something about the workings of justice in the real world, which means recognizing the tendency of human beings to utilize the power conferred upon them beyond its authorized limits, particularly in times of stress.
adults throughout recorded time have always thought that they could bully children and weaker adults through physical or emotional intimidation.
its wrong. its cruel and its just wrong.
my niece went to high school in san diego. her school had this dance, the Morp Dance (prom spelled backwards)
the girls VP thought that the dances kids did simulated sex — which they did and they do and they have since the beginning of time. so what you may ask?
well this so-called adult decided to check the underpants that the girls wore and had a campus uniform help her enforce this spot check. security guard w/ gun. if they wanted to get into the dance they had to submit. this sick excuse of a woman was checking to see if girls were a) wearing panties and b) if their panties were thongs. apparently the type of underwear or the presence of underwear was supposed to make the dance a “safer” environment in her sick mind.
it went on until some kid had the presence of mind to call her parents who then called the cops — the real cops — and a judge and the tv news.
anon: you wrote Look at the Dallas Morning News, an officer had a kid in the interrogation room who was mentally challenged, that invoked his right to an attorney. The POS officer kept clicking his 9mm as though he was loading it. I think the kid was about 15 or 16. This happened recently.
thanks for completely ruining my day. i think i prefer my police work to be done at the same place I received my legal training: d-DU du du du du DU
Law and Order.
once they “lawyer up” isn’t everything else inadmissable in Texas
GWMom.
Look at the Dallas Morning News, an officer had a kid in the interrogation room who was mentally challenged, that invoked his right to an attorney. The POS officer kept clicking his 9mm as though he was loading it. I think the kid was about 15 or 16. This happened recently.
he could have been water boarded into confessing….
just a thought.
There used to be this Constitutional Amendment, the Fifth if I remember it correctly, stating that no defendant can be compelled to provide incriminating evidence against themselves.
Read rigorously, that should mean, no force or violence or threat of violence can legally be used to obtain evidence from a defendant that could incriminate him criminally.
That would include forcing a mouth open, via force or threat of pain or threat of legal sanction. That should also include holding a defendant down while a blood sample if forceably taken.
We have apparently strayed judicially for the latter example (forceablely obtaining a blood sample), which appears to be a legal method for obtaining incriminating evidence.
That legal precedent is really legally no different than tasering compliance for a DNA sample.
The way I see it, they are all illegal, but judicially permitted.
Indentured Servant
“I would also willingly give DNA if I did not do a crime, but then again DNA is not always accurate…”
My first inclination would be not to provide one and I wouldn’t want to be tazered or beaten into submission to the request. Once you start down that path why even bother with the DNA? Just torture a confession out of the suspect.
The way I understand DNA forensics is that the current test can be used very easily to disprove guilt because it only takes one mis-match on any of the standard 13 loci tested proves it’s not the same person.
On the other hand, there are so many potential bases to check that any check short of a match of all 3 million bases (that differentiate persons) that might differ can not be stated as proof positive of guilt of the . DNA is a probability analysis in its current state. Maybe a good one but not absolute.
——-link
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml
“How is DNA typing done?
“To identify individuals, forensic scientists scan 13 DNA regions, or loci, that vary from person to person and use the data to create a DNA profile of that individual (sometimes called a DNA fingerprint). There is an extremely small chance that another person has the same DNA profile for a particular set of 13 regions. ”
farther on:
“Only one-tenth of a single percent of DNA (about 3 million bases) differs from one person to the next. Scientists can use these variable regions to generate a DNA profile of an individual, using samples from blood, bone, hair, and other body tissues and products. ”
——link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling