## Facts

- In 2009, Alonzo Jay King, Jr. was arrested on an unrelated second-degree assault charge in Maryland.
- Police collected a DNA sample from King by cheek swab during booking under Maryland’s DNA Collection Act.
- The DNA profile was uploaded to the state database and matched evidence from an unsolved 2003 rape case.
- King was charged and convicted of the 2003 first-degree sexual offense largely based on the DNA match.
- In an earlier decision, Maryland’s highest court had reversed the conviction on Fourth Amendment grounds, but the U.S. Supreme Court later held the arrestee DNA collection and analysis reasonable under the Fourth Amendment and reversed.
- On remand, the Maryland court addressed two remaining questions: a state-constitutional claim under Article 26 and an alleged trial-level burden-shifting error regarding statutory compliance.

## Issues

1. Whether King preserved for appellate review a claim that the DNA Collection Act violated Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.
2. Whether the trial court improperly shifted the burden to the defense by presuming the DNA collection complied with the DNA Collection Act when admitting the DNA evidence.

## Decision

- The court held that King did not preserve an Article 26 challenge because the claim was not distinctly raised in the trial court record.
- The court declined to reach the merits of whether Article 26 provides broader protection than the Fourth Amendment in this context.
- The court rejected King’s argument that the trial court impermissibly shifted the burden of proof regarding statutory compliance.
- The court concluded King did not show specific statutory noncompliance that would warrant exclusion of the DNA evidence.
- With the federal Fourth Amendment issue resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court and no reversible error on the remaining questions, the conviction remained intact.

## Legal Principles

- Appellate review in Maryland generally requires issue preservation; an appellate court will not decide an issue unless the record shows it was raised in or decided by the trial court.
- A generalized suppression argument does not automatically preserve distinct state-constitutional theories; a litigant must clearly present the Article 26 basis to obtain appellate review.
- In challenging DNA evidence based on alleged statutory noncompliance, a defendant must identify concrete statutory defects; broad assertions are insufficient absent record support.
- A trial court’s admission of DNA evidence does not constitute impermissible burden-shifting where the defendant fails to establish actual statutory violations affecting admissibility.

## Conclusion

The court, on remand, refused to consider an unpreserved Article 26 challenge to Maryland’s arrestee DNA statute and found no improper burden-shifting in the trial court’s admission of DNA evidence, leaving the conviction in place after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the DNA collection under the Fourth Amendment.


King v. State, 430 Md. 670, 63 A.3d 53 (2013)