{"id":17062,"date":"2026-08-19T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carolinaattorneys.com\/blog\/?p=17062"},"modified":"2026-08-13T18:02:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T22:02:04","slug":"warrantless-dna-testing-in-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolinaattorneys.com\/blog\/warrantless-dna-testing-in-north-carolina\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrantless DNA Evidence in North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warrantless DNA testing in North Carolina does not necessarily require police to obtain a new search warrant when the biological evidence was lawfully collected during an earlier investigation. In an August 5, 2026 opinion, State v. Howze<\/em>, the North Carolina Court of Appeals approved DNA testing of a bloodstained shirt collected in 2016 and later used to connect the defendant to a 2019 murder, challenging the legality of the original seizure and resulting in a Fourth Amendment search and seizure analysis.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
DNA Evidence Issue<\/th>\nWhat It Means in a North Carolina Criminal Case<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
How police obtained the DNA<\/td>\nThe analysis usually begins with how law enforcement came into possession of the biological material. A lawful warrant, consent, abandonment, plain view, statutory collection procedure, or another recognized legal basis may permit police to obtain evidence containing DNA.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
DNA taken directly from your body<\/td>\nA blood draw or cheek swab implicates constitutional protections because police are obtaining biological material directly from you. The legal authority for that collection should be examined separately from any later laboratory testing.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
DNA on discarded property<\/td>\nA cup, cigarette, bottle, straw, napkin, or similar item may contain DNA after it is discarded. Whether police may collect and test the item can depend on abandonment, where the property was left, and whether officers entered a constitutionally protected area to retrieve it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
DNA on lawfully seized property<\/td>\nClothing, weapons, vehicles, phones, and other physical evidence may contain blood, saliva, skin cells, hair, or other biological material. If police lawfully possess the item, later forensic testing may present a different constitutional question from the original seizure.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Testing evidence already in police possession<\/td>\nPolice may not necessarily need a new warrant merely because investigators later decide to conduct DNA testing on evidence they already lawfully possess. How the evidence originally came into government custody can therefore become key in a suppression analysis.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
DNA from an older or unrelated investigation<\/td>\nBiological evidence collected during one investigation may later become relevant to another investigation. The passage of time or the fact that the investigations are unrelated does not, by itself, determine whether later testing is lawful.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
How long can police keep biological evidence?<\/td>\nEvidence retention is a separate question from whether police can lawfully collect or test the evidence. The status of the investigation, preservation requirements, applicable statutes, and agency procedures may affect whether evidence must be retained, returned, destroyed, or removed from a database.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Challenging the original collection<\/td>\nA defense lawyer may examine whether police had a lawful basis to obtain the item or sample, whether officers were lawfully present, whether they had lawful access, and whether the facts existing at the time justified the seizure.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Challenging the DNA testing<\/td>\nEven when police lawfully obtained the evidence, DNA results might be challenged on the grounds of contamination, chain of custody, laboratory procedures, mixed samples, interpretation, statistical analysis, transfer, and other forensic issues.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
What a DNA result actually proves<\/td>\nA DNA “match” can help identify the source of biological material, but it does not necessarily establish when the material was deposited, how it arrived at a location, what activity produced it, or whether the person committed the charged offense.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

State v. Howze<\/a><\/em> is interesting in that the DNA evidence involved did not begin with a cheek swab, a discarded cup, an arrest-related DNA collection, or a search warrant directed toward the homicide being prosecuted.<\/p>\n

It began with a bloody shirt.<\/p>\n

In December 2016, J\u2019Marius Howze went to a hospital after suffering a gunshot wound. A High Point police officer responded to investigate the shooting. The officer saw blood on Howze\u2019s clothing and directed a crime-scene technician to collect the clothing as evidence. The investigation was never solved, and the shirt remained sealed in police evidence storage.<\/p>\n

Several years later, High Point police were investigating the May 2019 shooting death of Cameron Owens. Investigators recovered a HiPoint nine-millimeter carbine rifle near the murder scene. Detective Buben located the shirt from Howze\u2019s earlier shooting and submitted both the old clothing and swabs from the firearm to the State Crime Lab for DNA analysis. According to the opinion, the testing found Howze\u2019s DNA on almost every sample submitted from the gun. That evidence became part of the probable-cause showing used to obtain a warrant for his arrest for first-degree murder.<\/p>\n

Howze later moved to suppress the DNA evidence. His argument presented two distinct constitutional questions.<\/p>\n

First, could police lawfully seize his clothing at the hospital in 2016?<\/p>\n

Second, even if the shirt had been lawfully seized, could police years later analyze the biological material on it and use that DNA in an unrelated homicide investigation without obtaining another warrant?<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeals answered both questions in favor of the State.<\/p>\n

That second issue is what makes Howze<\/em> somewhat interesting, at least from a factual basis.<\/p>\n

Lawful Seizure of Evidence<\/h2>\n

Howze<\/em> does not begin with the proposition that police can test whatever DNA happens to come into their possession. The Court must first determine whether law enforcement has lawfully obtained evidence from the outset.<\/p>\n

In so doing, the State may rely on the longstanding plain-view doctrine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A warrantless seizure may be permissible when an officer is lawfully situated to observe the evidence, the item’s evidentiary or incriminating character is immediately apparent, and the officer has lawful access to the object. North Carolina cases also recognize an inadvertence component to the plain-view analysis.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201cimmediately apparent\u201d can, to some extent, be misleading. Police do not have to know with certainty precisely what later testing might reveal. Our appellate courts generally treat such issues as questions of probable cause<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It requires\u00a0probable cause to believe that the item is evidence of criminal activity. That determination must be tied to the circumstances known at the time the item is seized, not to evidence discovered through later testing.<\/p>\n

Officers responded to the hospital in 2016 after a reported shooting in which Mr. Howze and another man had been wounded. An officer observed Mr. Howze\u2019s gunshot wound and bloodstained clothing while gathering information about that shooting. The Court of Appeals concluded that police had probable cause to treat the clothing as evidence of the firearm incident then being investigated. The clothing could contain blood or DNA from someone else, gunshot residue, hair, fibers, or other trace evidence bearing upon what had occurred.<\/p>\n

The later 2019 murder presented a separate issue. DNA testing of biological material found on the lawfully seized shirt eventually connected Mr. Howze to an unrelated homicide. The court did not hold that police anticipated that connection when they seized the shirt. It held that the original seizure was lawful because the shirt had apparent evidentiary value in the shooting investigation, and that later forensic testing of lawfully obtained biological material did not constitute another search of Mr. Howze.<\/p>\n

There is an interesting point buried in that analysis. The evidentiary justification supporting the original seizure and the investigative purpose of the later DNA testing were not the same. According to the Court of Appeals, however, the lawful seizure of the biological material eliminated Mr. Howze\u2019s reasonable expectation of privacy in its subsequent forensic analysis.<\/p>\n

That is the important legal issue. The State did not need probable cause in 2016 to believe the shirt connected Howze to the later murder in 2019. It needed probable cause to believe the shirt was evidence of the shooting police were investigating at the hospital. The court then treated the later DNA analysis as permissible secondary use of biological evidence already lawfully possessed.<\/p>\n

Police Do Not Have Unlimited Access to Hospital Patients<\/h2>\n

If you are taken to a hospital after a shooting, a serious wreck, an assault, or a fight, there is a reasonable chance an officer will show up while you are still being treated. Most people assume that a treatment room is private space and that anything happening there stays between the patient and the medical staff. That assumption does not hold up in a criminal investigation. Hospital privacy rules govern what your doctors and nurses may disclose about your care. They do not turn a treatment area into a place officers can never enter, and they do not stop an officer from seeing what is in front of him.<\/p>\n

That distinction is where the Howze case landed. Police responded to a report that two people had been shot. Officers went to the hospital to find out what happened and to speak with the wounded. While there, an officer saw blood on the patient’s clothing and had a crime scene technician collect it. The Court of Appeals held that the officer was somewhere he had a right to be, relying in part on an earlier decision approving an officer’s presence in an emergency room while gathering evidence about a shooting. What the officer could plainly see, he could act on.<\/p>\n

Two practical points follow for anyone in that position.<\/p>\n

The first is that being the victim does not protect your property. The clothing in Howze was collected while he was the one who had been shot, years before anyone suspected him of anything. Bloodstained clothing can hold evidence of a violent event no matter who the wearer turns out to be, and once officers take it as evidence, they can keep it while the case remains unsolved. In that case, the clothing sat sealed in an evidence locker for years and resurfaced in a completely different investigation.<\/p>\n

The second is that police presence in a hospital is not unlimited. Howze does not say officers may walk into any treatment room whenever they want evidence. The ruling rested on why officers were there, what they were investigating, where the officer was standing, and what was visible from that lawful position. Change those facts and the analysis can change with them. Whether officers had a lawful right to be where they were, and lawful access to the thing they took, remains part of the constitutional question in every case.<\/p>\n

There is also something worth understanding about the conversation itself. Officers commonly arrive at the hospital to take a statement, and people who believe they are the victim usually talk freely. You are not required to give a statement, and anything you say during that conversation can be used later. If you have been injured under circumstances that police are investigating, the safer course is to get medical care first and speak with a lawyer before giving a detailed account.<\/p>\n

Once Police Lawfully Have Your DNA, They Can Test It Later<\/h2>\n

The part of this area of law that surprises most people is not the seizure. It is what happens afterward.<\/p>\n

There is a common assumption that DNA is different from other evidence. It feels personal in a way a gun or a phone does not. It carries information about your health, your family, your ancestry. Many people believe that even if police lawfully took something of theirs, the government still needs fresh permission before running genetic testing on it, and certainly before using the result in some unrelated case years down the road.<\/p>\n

North Carolina law does not work that way right now.<\/p>\n

The controlling idea comes from a 2001 decision called State v. Barkley<\/em><\/a>. A man voluntarily gave police a blood sample during a murder investigation, expecting it would clear him. It did. Police later used DNA from that same sample to link him to a different crime entirely, and he argued that the second use violated his constitutional rights. The Court of Appeals disagreed.<\/p>\n

Drawing blood is a search, and the government must comply with the Constitution to conduct a search. But once the sample has lawfully left the body, the privacy interest that made the draw a search is gone. Testing what the government already lawfully holds is not a new search. A lawfully obtained blood sample gets treated much like any other piece of physical evidence that can be sent to a laboratory.<\/p>\n

Howze<\/em> extends that reasoning to a situation with no consent at all. He never volunteered anything. Police simply seized bloodstained clothing during an investigation into a shooting where he was the wounded person. The Court of Appeals held that the difference did not matter because the analysis turns on whether the evidence was lawfully obtained, not on how cooperative the person was when it was obtained. The clothing was lawfully seized, so testing the blood on it years later added no further intrusion.<\/p>\n

Two things flow from that, and both are worth knowing before you find yourself on the wrong side of the law.<\/p>\n

Your genetic material can outlive the investigation it came from. Evidence collected in one case can sit in storage for years and then be pulled, tested, and compared against something in an entirely different case, in a different city, involving people you have never met. Nothing in this decision requires police to go back to a judge before making that comparison.<\/p>\n

And the moment that decides everything happens early. Whether the government can use a DNA result usually turns on whether it lawfully got the item in the first place. If the original seizure was unlawful, the later test result may be challengeable no matter how sophisticated the laboratory work. If the original seizure was lawful, arguing about the test itself is a much harder road. That is why an experienced defense lawyer starts with how the evidence came into police hands, not with the crime lab report.<\/p>\n

None of that means a DNA result is unbeatable. A constitutional ruling in the State’s favor says nothing about whether the sample was contaminated, whether the chain of custody holds, whether a mixed sample was interpreted correctly, whether the laboratory followed its own protocols, or what the statistical numbers actually mean. It also says nothing about when your DNA got somewhere or how it got there. Those remain fair fights.<\/p>\n

Getting Property and Samples Back From Police<\/h2>\n

People who have been the victim of a crime commonly assume their belongings will be returned once they are released from the hospital. That is not how evidence storage works. Property collected as part of an open investigation stays in police custody, and an unsolved case is treated as still open even after years of inactivity. The witnesses in this case testified that a stalled investigation is not a closed one and that evidence is held precisely because new information may surface later. Whether property can be released, and what happens to biological material on it, depends on the status of the case, the agency’s retention policy, and the statutes governing preservation of biological evidence. Those are worth asking about early rather than assuming that time alone clears the shelf.<\/p>\n

Can You Challenge DNA Evidence?<\/h2>\n

Everything in this decision rests on one condition. Police had the evidence lawfully. Remove that condition and the analysis changes.<\/p>\n

If the original seizure violates the Fourth Amendment<\/a> or Article I, Sections 19 or 20 of the North Carolina Constitution<\/a>, a later DNA result presents a very different problem for the State.<\/p>\n

Sometimes that is why the first questions a defense lawyer asks have nothing to do with genetics.<\/p>\n