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:
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)