Via Radley Balko, the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department collected DNA from middle-schoolers in an effort to identify the killer of 13-year-old Jessica Funk-Haslam.
Jessica Funk-Haslam was found in the dugout of a baseball field at Rosemont Park on March 5. Investigators say the girl had argued with her mother and left home the night before. She boarded a nearby light-rail train, transferred to a bus and got off near the park.
It’s a horrible crime, and certainly one that compels investigation. But when police decided to focus on students at Albert Einstein Middle School, their conduct raised serious issues.
Samples of DNA were collected without parental consent from students at a Sacramento, Calif., middle school in connection with the murder of an 8 th grade student who was found stabbed, strangled and beaten to death near the dugout of a local park.
The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, which has been spearheading the investigation into the murder of Jessica Funk-Haslam, 13, said parental consent was not required in the DNA collection and interview of minors, several of whom were taken out of class during the day last week at Albert Einstein Middle School.
“These are interviews, not interrogations,” Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Ramos told ABCNews.com. “They are all consensual. Once it’s done, there is a mechanism in place for school administrators to notify parents.”
Consensual? Because tweens knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily agreed to allow sheriff’s deputies to swab their DNA, fully aware of their right to refuse? That a mechanism may exist to notify parents after the damage is done is not merely irrelevant, but outrageous. Children are sent to school to be educated, not subject to the whims of police. Calling it an interview doesn’t alter the fact that this was without question an interrogation, a submission of young children to authority, both school and law enforcement, and it’s insulting to suggest otherwise.
One might expect the reaction to this overreaching intrusion to be swift and brutal, particularly by academics who should be peculiarly sensitive to the abuse of the tendency of children to submit to authority. One might be wrong.
There is nothing under California law that prohibits DNA collection of consenting minors, said John Myers, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
“I think the answer is, kids can consent, and if they consented and it was knowing and intelligent, [law enforcement] can do the search,” he told the Sacramento Bee.
Myers isn’t some kid-supplicant to the ways of police, but lauded on the McGeorge website as:
a Distinguished Professor and Scholar. He is one of the country’s foremost authorities on child abuse. He has traveled throughout the United States and abroad, making more than 400 presentations to judges, attorneys, police, doctors, and mental health professionals. Professor Myers is the author or editor of eight books and more than a hundred articles on child abuse. His writing has been cited by more than 150 courts, including the United States Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court.
If a “foremost authority” has no issues with the cops collecting DNA from “consenting children” in a schools without parental knowledge and consent, who am I to question it?
Of course, would it have undermined the need to collect evidence had the school refused the police unfettered access to the children until they notified and obtained authorization by the parents?
“The parents have been completely supportive of it, in fact advocating our detectives do that for the benefit of excluding their children,” Ramos said. “We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback.”
But one parent who said her son was interviewed wasn’t happy with the process.
“My child’s in a room with two detectives being questioned and grilled and I’m sure he was quite frightened, which is very upsetting,” Michaela Brown told the Los Angeles Times.
Under the circumstances, the death of a young girl in the balance, most parents would have little issue with the police, or more likely someone more benign like a school nurse, taking a cheek swab. Had the police obtained the consent of the parents of these children, there would be no issue here, To suggest, as Deputy Ramos does, that they’ve gotten “positive feedback” strikes me as absurd. Did the parents urge the cops to do DNA tests more often, just for fun? While some might be willing to endure the interrogation and testing of their child, there is nothing about this that strikes me as being positive.
The comment by parent Michaela Brown, on the other hand, seems far more likely, and rational. There is no child in a room with two detectives who isn’t frightened, who doesn’t feel coerced into complying. Most adults would feel that way, and it would take an enormously tough kid to not feel coerced to submit to the shield.
And what does the school have to say about their decision to provide police with unfettered access to the students without parental consent?
Administrators at Albert Einstein said they met their legal obligations by calling the parents and telling them what was happening, though in at least one case a voicemail message was left for a parent.
“Any time authorities come to our school and want to talk to our students, our first priority is to make sure we let parents know immediately,” said Gabe Ross of the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Apparently, the word “immediately” in Sacramento means after the cops are done interrogating and collecting DNA from a child. But since all the “experts” agree, why should parents (or old lawyers) take issue with the government doing as it pleases with children.
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This should result in a class-action lawsuit against the school district and Sheriff, but since it wasn’t school officials perving on student’s illegally activated webcams, no harm, no foul.
It takes an enormously tough adult not to be coerced into submission. It’s hard to imagine what it would take for a child not to submit to police authority, especially since children are typically taught that police are the good guys. This unfettered access to children without a parent is outrageous.
The “wrong” here is significantly different than the conduct at the Lower Merion School District or the Safford Middle School’s handling of Savana Redding. Just as we distinguish between a murder and a punch, let’s not lose proportionality in the spectrum of impropriety perpetrated by school officials against children.
Few parents would have the wherewithal to say no. I can’t conceive of a child refusing to comply.
That was Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in dissent in Treasury Employees v Von Raab, 489 US 656, 686 (1989)
It probably didn’t enter the minds of most of the children or parents to protest. They, too, have been taught small respect for their own privacy.
given that if some pervert would have sex with one of the 13 year olds who the police conducted a “consensual” DNA dragnet and interviews with, the same police would arrest them – and add in the legal inability of a 13 year old to enter into a contract – it seems that legally 13 year olds are only allowed to consent to potentially harmful activities involving the police.
Funny how kids’ ability to maturely consent fleshes out, isn’t it? And we’re not even talking about voting, driving or drinking.
My fingerprints have been on file with the FBI since I was six. Way back then, in Detroit, there’d been a rash of child abductions. Schools (and parents) were sold on the idea that having fingerprints of their kids on file would somehow prove useful were those kids to be abducted. Parental consent forms were sent out before the Fibbies stopped by the school, however.
Later in life, while working at high-risk US Embassies in the Middle East, employees were asked to provide DNA samples so that our shattered remains could be identified from the wreckage of buildings after they’d been blown up.
Children with a tendency to submit to authority grow into adults and parents with a tendency to submit to authority.
Although I think we use the term “authority” a little too lightly here, since clearly the cops had no legal authority to compel the submission, they were only using the color of law and the ignorance of the children to do so (even if they deny that after the fact.)
I had my children printed, but I kept the prints. If they were ever needed, I would have them. That struck me as a better course.
Consenting minors? Isn’t that a legal oxymoron? Really, isn’t it? I always thought so. But I guess not. Outrageous.
I’m almost surprised they didn’t come away from this with a “confession” from some terrified kid. But I guess they would have to get them into a police interrogation room for that result.
As a matter of law “kids” do not have capacity. Duh. Like “jailbait.” Wonder if John Myers can see the analogy. Wonder what bar exam he passed.
Actually I was referring to the invertabrate parental reaction in the current case as opposed to what happened with the webcams. Should have been clearer.
I don’t know about your state, but “statutory rape” in Michigan (“jailbait” as you put it) has nothing to do with consent. It is based upon a legislative determination that sexual relations involving persons who have yet to attain a certain age, or between persons who share defined consanguinity or affinity, is criminal, without regard to consent, intent, or even knowledge of such age or relationship.
As for capacity otherwise, none of which I know depend upon whether the person of a given age has ability to consent, or reason, but are based upon (we hope reasoned) fiat, just as the US Constitution’s stipulation of age requirements for congressional or presidential office, or, for that matter, the declaration (e.g., in the United States) that vehicular traffic be on the right side of the road.
Without regard to consent or intent that’s right. An analogy.
Here in NY law enforcement is required to obtain the consent of a parent or guardian to interrogate a person less than 16 y/o and to have the parent or guardian present during the interrogation. If they don’t see to it the statement is subject to suppression.
I find it particularly hard to conceive of jurisdictions where this isn’t the law. It seems appalling that parents aren’t entitled to be present when their children are interrogated.
Yeah. Medieval.
To say it has nothing to do with consent is not really correct. The idea behind such limits is that there is an (unrebuttable, by law) presumption that those below the age set are incapable of giving consent.
You’re both right. As a minor is incapable of giving consent as a matter of law, it is consent-based in concept, but consent implies a choice, and there is no choice as it’s legislatively fixed that minors cannot consent.