S and Marper V United Kingdom - Judgment

Judgment

In a unanimous verdict, the seventeen-judge bench held that there had been a violation of Article 8 and awarded €42,000 to each of the applicants. The Court did therefore not go on to consider whether the retention of DNA was also a breach of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) as the applicants had also argued that they had suffered detrimental treatment on the basis of an acquired status. Notably, another part of the United Kingdom, namely Scotland, had provided an example of a proportionate, more rational approach in regard to DNA retention, in that samples were to be destroyed if an individual was not convicted or granted an absolute discharge; an exemption however exists for the authorities to retain samples if the individual is suspected of certain sexual or violent offences (Retention Guidelines for Nominal Records on the Police National Computer 2006).

Through this ruling, the European Court of Human Rights has further developed its body of jurisprudence on what measures are likely to fall outside a state’s margin of appreciation. The Court determined that where there is no consensus between member states as to how important a matter at stake is, the margin ought to be wider, however as the facts in this instance involved the interference with intimate details of utmost importance to the individual, the margin allowed to the state was narrow and the United Kingdom had not struck the right balance.