Damn! If you don't think fascism is here
and this is the new slavery, remember the auction blocks?!?
Supreme Court Ruling
Allows Strip-Searches for Any Offense
By Adam Liptak, The New
York Times
02 April 12
he Supreme Court on Monday ruled
by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for
any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the
officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.
Justice
Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court's conservative wing, wrote that courts
are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who
must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs but also
public health and information about gang affiliations.
About
13 million people are admitted each year to the nation's jails, Justice Kennedy
wrote.
Under
Monday's ruling, he wrote, "every detainee who will be admitted to the
general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while
undressed."
Justice
Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the four dissenters, said strip-searches were
"a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy" and
should be used only when there was good reason to do so.
The
decision endorses a more recent trend, from appeals courts in Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia,
in allowing searches no matter how minor the charge. Some potential examples
cited by dissenting judges in the lower courts and by Justice Breyer on Monday
included violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay
child support.
The
Supreme Court case arose from the arrest of Albert
W. Florence in New Jersey in 2005. Mr. Florence was in the passenger
seat of his BMW when a state trooper pulled his wife, April, over for speeding.
A records search revealed an outstanding warrant based on an unpaid fine. (The
information was wrong; the fine had been paid.)
Mr.
Florence was held for a week in jails in two counties, and he was
strip-searched twice. There is some dispute about the details but general
agreement that he was made to stand naked in front of a guard who required him
to move intimate parts of his body. The guards did not touch him.
"Turn
around," Mr. Florence, in an
interview last year, recalled being told by jail officials. "Squat
and cough. Spread your cheeks."
"I
consider myself a man's man," said Mr. Florence, a finance executive for a
car dealership. "Six-three. Big guy. It was humiliating. It made me feel
less than a man."
The
federal courts of appeal were divided over whether blanket policies requiring
jailhouse strip-searches of people arrested for minor offenses violate the
Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches. At least seven had ruled
that such searches were proper only if there was a reasonable suspicion that
the arrested person had weapons or contraband.
Justice
Kennedy said the most relevant precedent was Bell v. Wolfish, which was decided by a 5-to-4 vote
in 1979. It allowed strip-searches of people held at the Metropolitan
Correctional Center in New York after "contact visits" with
outsiders.
As
in the Bell case, Justice Kennedy wrote, "the undoubted security
imperatives involved in jail supervision override the assertion that some
detainees must be exempt from the more invasive search procedures at issue
absent reasonable suspicion of a concealed weapon or other contraband."
The
majority and dissenting opinions drew differing conclusions from the available
statistics and anecdotes about the amount of contraband introduced into jails
and how much strip-searches add to pat-downs and metal detectors.
"It
is not surprising that correctional officials have sought to perform thorough
searches at intake for disease, gang affiliation and contraband," Justice
Kennedy wrote. "Jails are often crowded, unsanitary and dangerous
places."
"There
is a substantial interest," he added, "in preventing any new inmate,
either of his own will or as a result of coercion, from putting all who live or
work at these institutions at even greater risk when he is admitted to the
general population."
In
separate concurrences, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A.
Alito Jr. emphasized the limits of the majority opinion. Chief Justice Roberts,
quoting from an earlier decision, said that exceptions to Monday's ruling were
still possible "to ensure that we 'not embarrass the future.' "
Justice
Alito wrote that different rules may apply for people arrested but not held
with the general population or whose detentions had "not been reviewed by
a judicial officer."
In
his dissent in the case, Florence v. County of Burlington, No. 10-945, Justice
Breyer wrote that the Fourth Amendment should be understood to prohibit
strip-searches of people arrested for minor offenses not involving drugs or
violence unless officials had a reasonable suspicion that the people to be
searched were carrying contraband.
Lindah F. Martin, Field
Services Representative
PROUD MEMBER OF
CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATE STAFF UNION
California Teachers
Association (CCA)
333 Hatch Drive,
Foster City CA 94404
Ph. (650)
577-5184 Fax: (650) 577-5160
