Strip searches are Constitutional according to Supreme Court

Washington Post 04/02/12 Robert Barnes

“Supreme Court upholds jail strip searches, including for minor offenses”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-upholds-jail-strip-searches----even-for-minor-offenses/2012/04/02/gIQAsZB4qS_story.html

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that those arrested for even minor violations may be strip-searched before being admitted to jail, saying safety concerns outweigh personal privacy rights.
The court’s conservatives ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip-searched after being mistakenly arrested on an outstanding warrant.

“There is a substantial interest 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,” Kennedy wrote.

More than 13 million people are admitted to jails each year, Kennedy wrote.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by the rest of the court’s liberals. He said corrections officials must have reason to believe that the person arrested poses a danger before subjecting them to a strip search that is “inherently harmful, humiliating, and degrading.”

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.

Kennedy’s opinion said corrections officials “must have substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions to the problems they face.”

Common Sense Review

This case causes me kind of teetering on whether this is unconstitutional illegal search and seizure or whether the safety of the facility is more important.

If I was mistakenly arrested, I wouldn’t want to be strip searched. How often does that happen?

Should we adjust our law to protect the rare occasion of mistaken identity? Isn’t the laws of the US are created to protect the innocent yet are we to protect those who are not innocent?

Yet does the Constitution protect against illegal search and seizure? Does the Constitution wait for the door to open or does it kick the door down?