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From Botero's "Abu Ghraib" series (photo: da5ide, flickr)
The United States Supreme Court yesterday announced a new rule further eviscerating our disappearing right to privacy. In a 5-4 majority decision written by Justice Kennedy, joined by justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas, the Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit jails from strip-searching all inmates, including people jailed for minor offenses, if they are to be placed in general population. The ruling applies to visual searches of genital areas by corrections officers without physically touching the inmate.
Such searches are commonly referred to as a “squat and cough” that, in theory, is supposed to dislodge any contraband concealed in the vagina or rectum. In practice, they are used to humiliate inmates and emphasize that they are not in control.
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post reports:
The case was brought by Albert Florence, a New Jersey man who said he was subjected to two invasive inspections in 2005 after being mistakenly arrested for not paying a fine.
A state trooper pulled over Florence’s BMW in 2005 as he and his family were on the way to his mother-in-law’s to celebrate the purchase of their new home. He was handcuffed and arrested in front of his distraught, pregnant wife and young son.
He spent seven days in jail because of a warrant that said, mistakenly, that he was wanted for not paying a court fine. In fact, he had proof that the fine had been paid years earlier; he said he carried it in his glove box because he believed that police were suspicious of black men who drove nice cars.
Florence was jailed in Burlington County and then Essex County before a magistrate ordered him released. At Burlington, he said, he was forced to disrobe in front of an officer and told to lift his genitals. At Essex, he was strip-searched again and, he said, was made to squat and cough in front of others, a maneuver meant to expel anything hidden in a body cavity.
Ten states currently prohibit jails from strip searching new inmates jailed for misdemeanors absent reasonable suspicion to believe they are concealing contraband. The federal Bureau of Prisons has a similar rule. This ruling does not require a change in policy.
Justice Breyer wrote the dissent, joined by justices Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
12 Comments
Thanks for writing this up, Mason. I was in the middle of doing so yesterday when a friend let me know that DD had, so I bailed. Then I realized that this end of the site has a somewhat different readership, and I maybe should have continued. Hope it’s okay if I give this little but more that was interesting to me, though there were almost too many ironies in the evidence and Justice’s questions that a person could gag on them, including the fact that this was a big win for the Obama administration, ‘Safety Comes First’, ya know.
In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court ruled today that even those arrested for minor offenses and about to admitted into the general population can be stripped, and don’t need to be deemed ‘suspicious’ before close inspection of body parts. Justice Kennedy apparently remarked how crowded, unsanitary, and dangerous jails often are .
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito wrote separately concerning limitations to the ruling, with Alito apparently stating that ‘people arrested for minor offenses can argue before a judge that they should have been held separately from the general population and spared a strip search.’
I guess that is for..ya know, later on..after a person has been subjected to the humiliating invasion of privacy if you want to bring a lawsuit against the police or sheriffs running the place. Now, there is some good news. The jail folks can’t actually pry into your various body cavities; they have to ask you to spread them for inspection, no prodding or direct ogling permitted.
SCOTUSblog has further analysis.
Does not bode well, and protesters everywhere should prepare to be treated in this way.
Rec’d.
WTF misdemeanor’s deserve a strip search? Just how did Scalia and Thomas sq that with what the founding fathers originally intended? Heck the British never did crap like that to us and we revolted.
What desperate need do the police have to see me nakid?
Thanks for the additional information. I deliberately kept my article short hoping to encourage people to add more. Glad you did.
Yes, this decision is outrageous and demonstrates how contemptuous, out of touch, and above it all the radical conservatives are.
They would be singing a different tune, if they had to endure a squat and cough.
The “squat and cough” is basically pure intimidation via humiliation.
Similar to the aggressive TSA patdowns, these searches are calculated to ingrain fear of authority.
Then again, mebbe some of them would get a thrill from sqatting and coughing; pervs can wear black robes, too, as we know only too well.
Some accounts had this a Big Win for the Obama administration, but I hadn’t followed that out.
You have duplicate posts up, though the comments are the same on both. But you may want to ‘unpublish’ one, so comments appear on just one over time.
I grew up in Chicago, and even five years ago, there were still problems coming about because the police officers felt that women guilty of traffic violations needed to be prodded.
My neighbor’s one year old was prodded, as well as had her diaper removed, when the family was attempting to fly home from an Arizona vacation.
We better get used to it, I guess. Neither party cares one whit about our freedoms. Except of course, our right when we are billionaires to destroy the economy, insist on Bailouts for ourselves, and then demand that social programs be gutted. Don’t want those damn Social Services funded to help the lazy, don’cha know!
Glad you did it your way; I was writing to much in case I’d get it wrong, since I have zero legal background. (‘I’m not a *real* doctor…’)
But here’s corroboration from Glenn Greenwald that O’s administration was at work with the issue.
Double-meh.
One would think that the proponents of strip-search-everyone before placing them in general population would necessarily bear a high burden of persuasion to convince the Court that adoption of the new rule is necessary to solve a serious smuggled-contraband problem in our nation’s jails. Yet no such evidence exists.
In addition, as I also mentioned in my article, visual squat-and-cough strip searches only occasionally reveal contraband. As such, the primary reason for the searches is to humiliate and degrade inmates while reminding them that they are not in control.
One can only hope that the 5 Supreme Court Justices and Barack Obama experience the pleasure of undergoing one of these searches.
And, of course, they fool no one. We know they intend to use these searches to harass, humiliate, and degrade protesters.
Yet one more reason, as if we needed one, to detest and vote against Barack Obama.
BTW, I don’t know why my article is showing up twice in the column to the right. I only posted it once and there is no copy to delete. If I delete the only copy I have, the whole thing will disappear.
It would be great of we only had a real Dem run against strip searches for Misdemeanor’s. It would be real funny if we could get Obama and the GOP Presidential Candidates to try and defend that ruling.
Freedom from Healthcare but No Nakid Privacy if you commit a Misdemeanor? Mason is right this is fear and intimidation.
Look it’s terrible! No two ways about it! They’re closing off the avenues for peaceful change, and they’re doing it in a society with a culture of violence and second amendment rights to bear arms. It’s a recipe for violent explosions, I’m afraid. And I don’t think there’s a large enough military to contain them, either. We’re looking at an increasingly dark future.
I believe you may be right.