Two Boulder detectives violated a man’s constitutional rights by interrogating him at his home using a court order that solely authorized the collection of his DNA evidence, the Colorado Supreme Court concluded on Tuesday.
The ruling curtailed the ability of police to use a narrow category of court orders, issued without probable cause, to obtain incriminating testimony from a suspect after they inform him of their authorization to collect other forms of evidence.
When officers show up to execute the order, wrote Justice William W. Hood III in the June 23 opinion, the suspect is not free to leave and is subject to a constitutional “seizure.”…