Posted on 04/02/2012 1:08:50 PM PDT by katiedidit1
The Supreme Court upheld Monday the power of jails across the United States to carry out invasive strip searches on all incoming detainees, including those suspected of minor offenses.
In a 5-4 ruling, it threw out an innocent New Jersey businessman's claim that his constitutional rights were violated when jailers showered him with delousing agent and lifted his genitals during his week behind bars.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
New Jersey man arrested for a traffic fine that had already been paid. A minor violation...he was strip searched twice. I view that as “unreasonable” search and seizure but wonder why it wasnt checked out before hand that his fine had already been cancelled out.
Basing my views on what I have heard about this case.
Standard procedure, practically everywhere.
Have you ever been to jail?
But the decision to uphold it was only 5-4.
No, thank the Lord..but this guy was arrested for a traffic fine he had paid years ago and strip searched! not once..but twice.
From the top of the hour news, the twice was because he was brought into two different jails. I don’t like this, but if you are arrested the jailers have to be able to keep contraband out of jails.
The solution here is to:
1. Make a bunch fewer laws. We have way too many laws to run a foul of in this country.
2. Make the agency that screwed up and had him arrested pay him damages so huge that the agency is in danger of not being able to perform its function. Since they apparently can not now perform their function anyway, perhaps he should get half their budget.
He may have been undeserving of the treatment, but it's pretty standard procedure.
Has been for hundreds of years. You control access to weapons and such among prisoners this way.
I'm not inclined to outrage over this. It's common and practical and logical.
It does not matter about the circumstances, if you're going into the jail population you gotta be searched.
Even though I was wrongly chastised by a few here for calling the black robed morons, black robed morons, I will do it again.
Here, once more we have either 4 or 5 black robed morons who are supposed to be SUPREME COURT JUSTICE material and cannot agree on what that rather short document means.
Obviously they heard much more that we have in the very limited news reports and again should have taken all that SUPREME Constitutional expertise on our foundation document and be able to agree 9-0 yes or no but instead we have the 5-4 political hack moron factor.
I want the constitution followed otherwise we should all be free to decide what laws we will or will not follow.
Given we do not have the SUPREME Constitutional understanding falsely attributed to these morons, ignorance of the law should be a valid excuse.
YES THEY ARE MORONS. Political hack MORONS. The party above all else even the US Constitution and the citizens. But I’ll give them a little leeway after all they are lawyers so honesty and character are not their strong suits.
Where do the courts draw the line at “unreasonable search and seizure” ..I mean this was an innocent man and it was over a traffic fine that had been paid. He did appeal it to the district court and won but it went all the way to the Supreme Court and he lost...5 to 4 ruling.
Couldnt agree with you more. Disgrace!
The offense to the guy’s liberty was that some anonymous clerk somewhere failed to clear his traffic charge when the fine had been paid. Jail is an awful place, but it would be a lot worse if people were allowed in and out of the general population without thorough search.
yeah. probably they wouldn’t be able to attract as much “talent” without the “fringe benefits.”
Maybe they should strip search the prison guards upon entering the cells..some contraband is brought in by the guards.
Maybe they should strip search the prison guards upon entering the prisons..some contraband is brought in by the guards.
The problem is that he sued the wrong people for the wrong reasons. He should have sued for wrongful arrest because he had proof of the paid fine. He could have alleged racism in the arrest as well. Instead, the SCOTUS hears a case on whether a person can be strip-searched for minor offenses. They ruled that they can. This poor dude's innocence was never a factor.
Well, police need a court order to take your blood for a DUI test, involuntary, and I would think it would be obvious they would need a court order to conduct a body cavity search.
You make a good point.
My opinion is that he sued the wrong party. The jailers did nothing to him. They merely searched him as they search anyone who in arrested and introduced into the jail. I can assure him that were he arrested and put in a jail where they jailers were not allowed to fully search everyone, more than his dignity would have been at risk.
The party that wronged him was the part of the government that made the error. But maybe he was not allowed to sue them?
Personally, I think a huge mistake after the American revolution was the founders or the courts allowing sovereign immunity to continue. Doing away with the king being better than us, for example not subject to tort law, was what the revolution was all about. Yet sovereign immunity was taken that whole cloth from the British system and I guess other sovereigns in Europe.
If any level of government harms a private citizen, that level of government and the individual who committed the harm should be made to play including individual liability.
Can you imagine how much smaller, more careful and circumspect government would be if in the ordinary course of business they were subject to tort liability like the rest of us?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.