Los Angeles County Criminal Lawyer Blog

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which has jurisdiction over much of the West Coast of the United States including Los Angeles County has ruled that strip-searches of incoming jail inmates are constitutional and necessary to prevent the smuggling of drugs and other forbidden items into lockup facilities.

This decision comes on the heels of a 2008 Ninth Circuit decision that such searches are so intrusive and dehumanizing that they violate a person's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure unless there is good cause to believe that someone is in possession of contraband.

The ruling is the result of a class-action lawsuit brought by nine antiwar protester against San Francisco arising out of their arrests at a 2002 demonstration.

Judge Sandra S. Ikuta attempted to justified the ruling by stating that the strip-search policy was "reasonable under the Fourth Amendment" as such searches resulted in hundreds of instances where money, drugs, and weapons were seized and that such items can jeopardize the safety of jail staff as well as other inmates.

Judge Sidney R. Thomas was joined by three other judges on the panel in his dissenting opinion. In his opinion Thomas stated that one of the plaintiffs had been arrested at a peaceful protest, slammed to a concrete floor during booking, stripped and subjected to a body-cavity search, then left naked in a cell for eleven hours. She was subsequently strip-searched a second time and then released without charges.

Thomas had ruled in 2008 that without probable cause such searches cannot be upheld as "the intrusiveness of body-cavity searches cannot be overstated."

While one's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure may be somewhat diminished in a lockup facility, in an automobile, or even in a school setting, under most circumstances, one cannot be detained or searched without ...

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