DNA case reaches Appeal Court

Police powers to retain fingerprints and DNA samples taken from suspects cleared of crime have been attacked in the Appeal Court as a violation of human rights.

The case centres on a decision by South Yorkshire Police to keep samples from a 12-year-old boy acquitted of attempted robbery, and a man who was charged with harassing his partner but never prosecuted.

Their lawyers are challenging Section 82 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act, which allows police to retain samples which would previously have had to be destroyed.

Section 82 was introduced to create a police database, and police forces already routinely store samples.

DNA database at Forensic Science Service laboratory

On Monday, civil rights QC Richard Gordon said the powers discriminate against exonerated suspects because they go against the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

But lawyers representing the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire and the Home Office said the interference was "justified".

The 12-year-old boy at the centre of the legal challenge was arrested and charged in Sheffield in January 2001.

After his acquittal, the police rebuffed requests to destroy the samples.

Implied suspicion

And the man concerned, Michael Marper from Stradbroke, Sheffield, was arrested and charged with harassing his partner, Linda Robinson, in March 2001.

She withdrew the complaint and the prosecution was discontinued.

Mr Gordon told the court the retention of fingerprints and DNA breached his clients' right to respect for their private lives under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as being a breach of Article 14, which bans discrimination.

He told the court it discriminated between those who had "been through the hands" of the police and those who had never been under suspicion.

But Mr David Bean QC, said that was "a difference of history, not of status, nor of personal characteristics."

The hearing continues.