Mr. Walpin is the author of the recently published The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution (Significance press 2013)
The Supreme Court has long recognized that “the primary function of government … is to render security to its subjects, [with] any mischief menacing that security demand[ing] a remedy.” In simple language, that means that our government has the responsibility to imprison those who have committed crimes endangering people, such as murder or rape. Taking them off the streets saves many innocent persons from being the victim of such crimes because, even as Attorney-General Holder vouched, “[m]ost crimes in America are committed by people who have committed crimes before.”It is logical and human nature that someone who has already committed a rape is more likely to commit another one, particularly after having gotten away without prosecution, than one who has never done so.
Thus it was not surprising that the Supreme Court, on June 3, 2013, sustained a jury verdict finding the defendant Alonzo King guilty of rape on incontrovertible evidence: The defendant’s DNA had matched the perpetrator’s DNA found in the rape victim.
What is surprising, and not boding well for future rulings on clearly guilty criminals who should be taken out of circulation, is that the Court vote was only 5-4,
and thus but one vote away from ordering this rapist released back to society to commit another rape on an innocent victim.
The four dissenters never disputed that King was clearly shown to have performed this 2003 rape after breaking into the woman’s home, armed with a gun, with his face concealed, thus carefully hiding his identity from the victim. It was unlikely that he would ever have been apprehended and connected to this rape, except that, in 2009, six years later, King was arrested for assault with a shotgun. As part of the regular Maryland booking procedure for serious offense, along with fingerprinting and photo, his DNA sample was taken by applying a cotton swab to the inside of his cheek. That DNA was found to match the DNA taken from the 2009 rape victim.
The 4-Justice dissent would have reversed the rape conviction, and allowed King to go free, because they claimed that swabbing King’s cheek to get a DNA sample was an illegal search, with any evidence learned as a result of that swabbing to be excluded. Obviously, excluding the DNA evidence meant that King would not be connected to the rape that he committed.
