Legal Challenges
The issue of taking fingerprints and a DNA sample was involved in a case decided at the High Court on 23 March 2006. A teacher who was accused of assault won the right to have her DNA sample and fingerprints destroyed. They had been taken whilst she was in custody, but after the Crown Prosecution Service had decided to not pursue any charges against her. She should have been released expediently once this was the case and so her continued detention to obtain samples was unlawful, and thus the samples were taken "without appropriate authority". Had they been taken before the decision not to prosecute, the samples would have been lawful and retained as normal.
Read more about this topic: United Kingdom National DNA Database
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or challenges:
“Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.”
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