ONCE IT WAS JUST YOUR FINGERPRINT... 
The Village Voice runs a lengthy story today about an attempt by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Innocence Project to shut down Linkage, a city database that collects the DNA of “criminals” while criminal proceedings against them are still underway. “Once charges against you have been dismissed, then you shouldn’t have your DNA permanently on file simply because you were arrested,” says Legal Aid attorney Bob Newman. “That gives too much power to the police.” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Albert Tomei last year agreed with the civil libertarians, preventing the entry into Linkage of DNA from Troy Hendrix, a 22-year-old with an IQ of 70 who was charged with (and later convicted of) the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a Hunter College student named Romona Moore. Hendrix isn’t exactly the poster-child for defendants’ rights — he and a co-defendant chained and drugged Moore before beating her to death with a hammer and allegedly raping her corpse. The city’s reasoning — that the system’s successful use of (sometimes voluntarily provided) DNA to connect new criminal suspects with old crimes warrants its use at any cost — has its own Orwellian logic. Currently, the NYCLU and the Innocence Project are waging a nationwide fight against voluntarily-provided DNA. “DNA is not like a fingerprint; it reveals all sorts of information about your family, predisposition to diseases, and ancestry,” says Tania Simoncelli, an ACLU science and technology fellow.

HAMPTON FRAYS
Eastern District Judge Joseph Bianco yesterday dealt a blow to the Shinnecock Indians’ efforts to build a casino in Hampton Bays. The tribe — still enmeshed in a legal battle to gain “federal recognition” by the Department of the Interior, required to build a casino on ancestral land — broke ground on the Southampton site in 2003. The town sued, and a federal trial ended last May, reports Newsday. Although the town agrees that the Shinnecocks own the land, Bianco ruled that documents prove “in clear and unequivocal language” that the tribe's aboriginal title was lost in the 17th century. Moreover, Bianco used the tribe’s uncertain federal status and the casino’s “highly disruptive effects” on neighbors and all of Suffolk County to reject the bid. “The only rational conclusion to be drawn from the evidence is that ... the addition of a casino to this already overburdened traffic system would be disastrous,” wrote Bianco. Despite the Hamptons death knell, the tribe’s federal recognition lawsuit might be even more instructive on its gambling future: earlier this month, the Shinnecocks announced that they have entered into a business partnership to construct a casino at an even more lucrative site — the Aqueduct Race Track in Queens.

I'LL SUE THE JUDGE!
The New York Law Journal today reports on Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Herman Cahn’s sanctioning of an attorney for his “grossly frivolous” attempt to disqualify a Manhattan Housing Court judge on behalf of his tenant clients, who were seeking attorney fees after they won a $31,000 judgment in a landlord tenant suit. Robin H. Kyle was forced to pony up $1000 for his role in a complicated series of events that led to two plaintiffs suing New York County Housing Court Judge Gerald Lebovits for rebuffing their efforts to collect fees, a move Lebovits called so “frivolous and so sanctionable that it shocks the conscience.”

SOLIDARITY MILLIONAIRES
Gothamist reports on a lawsuit filed against New York City by 15 bicyclists who were arrested in the 2004 Critical Mass ride, a contingent of activists who rode to promote bike solidarity and protest the Republican National Convention. The arrests marked the beginning of a period of extended acrimony between police and the pro-cyclist group, and were made despite the group having received permits to ride. The lawsuit seeks $5 million each for compensatory damages, and alleges the police department created and distributed false information about the group, failed to turn over exculpatory evidence, and lacked probable cause to initiate criminal proceedings.

THE STARS SAY I'LL WIN
The Times Herald-Record has an entertaining piece about the publicity machine of Sullivan County Court judicial candidate Cindy Barber, a Democrat who is vying for the seat of Republican incumbent Burton Ledina. Barber recently spent thousands on advertisements in local papers in which her name is substituted in horoscope entries. “The twins in you are in conflict today,” one entry under Gemini reads. “But, they agree that Cindy Barber will excel as the next Sullivan County Court Judge.” Barber’s public relations firm, Focus Media, said it wasn’t involved as the would-be judge’s astrological advocate.