The Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA) filed a brief this week with the United States Supreme Court in support of a Maryland rape victim. MCASA was joined by twenty-six other state sexual assault coalitions across the nation. The case, State of Maryland v. King, involves a perpetrator who broke into a 53 year-old woman’s home wearing a scarf over his face, ordered the victim not to look at him, and raped her while holding a gun to her head.
The 2003 crime went unsolved until 2009 when Alonzo Jay King, Jr. was arrested on an unrelated charge that resulted in his DNA being collected and entered into Maryland’s then-new “arrestee” DNA database, where it matched with DNA collected from the victim. King was arrested for his sexual assault, and he was convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to life in prison.
Maryland's high court, the Court of Appeals, struck down the statute allowing for DNA testing of arrestees and the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of that decision.
William C. Sammons, Kristin P. Herber, and Lydia S. Hu at the Baltimore law firm Tydings & Rosenberg represented the coalitions in the
amicus brief supporting the State and asking that the arrestee testing law be upheld. State sexual assault coalitions are non-profit organizations representing a state’s rape crisis centers, sexual assault survivors, and others concerned with ending sexual violence. MCASA’s Counsel and Executive Director, Lisae C. Jordan, expressed appreciation for the firm’s work on the case noting that, “if the Court of Appeals decision is allowed to stand, this known rapist will go free and the survivor will never see justice.”
Read the brief
here.
