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:
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“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)