14 DAY TRIAL // Two British citizens that sued the UK government for refusing to destroy their DNA and fingerprints records, after being acquitted of the criminal charges brought against them, won as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that this represented a direct violation of their right to private and family life.
In 2001, Michael Marper, then 37-years-old, and a minor identified only as S., aged 11 at the time, both residents of Sheffield, England, were arrested on different charges. S. was charged with attempted robbery, while Marper with harassment. After the charges against them had been dropped, the two requested that the cellular records and fingerprints gathered during the investigations be destroyed.
Their attempts were unsuccessful, because the law in UK did not specify an exact retention time, so, in August 2004, they registered a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. The complaint was accepted in January 2007, and the public hearing took place in February 2008.
The Court concluded that because cellular samples and DNA profiles also contained extended personal information about an individual or its relatives, like health status and ethnic origin, in addition to being just a means of identification, the retention itself of such records was “to be regarded as interfering with the right to respect for the private lives of the individuals concerned.”
The Court also noted that, while the retention of such records was lawful under the UK legislation, the law itself that facilitated the retention left a lot to be desired. Upon comparing to similar legislation in other European countries, it was found that it lacked the means of balancing the public and private interests. Some examples of differences included the gathering of such information only for offenses that exceed a certain degree of severity, the limitation of retention time, and even the destruction of records after the individuals had been acquitted.
“The Court was struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the power of retention in England and Wales,” was noted in a press release on the ECHR's website. According to the same press release, the Court found that “England, Wales and Northern Ireland appeared to be the only jurisdictions within the Council of Europe to allow the indefinite retention of fingerprint and DNA material of any person of any age suspected of any recordable offence.”
Therefore, the Court concluded that Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life, of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated, and that the “respondent State had overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation in this regard.”
This decision is particularly important, as it could result in similar records on around 850,000 individuals being removed from UK's national database. “DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, providing the police with more than 3,500 matches a month, and I am disappointed by the European Court of Human Rights' decision...The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgment,” commented UK's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.