On April 2, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled, in a case entitled Florence v. Board of Freeholders, in a 5-to-4 decision to allow law enforcement officials to strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jail. This decision would hold true even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of weapons, narcotics or any other dangerous or illegal item. This decision presents a certain degree of irony, especially in light of the current Affordable Health Care legislation pending before the High Court.
The irony lies in the fact that based upon many of the questions posed by the right-leaning justices of the Court (whose worldviews are mainly limited government and maximized freedom) during the Court's recent oral arguments on the health care legislation, it appears that the Supreme Court is prepared to state that mandating a fee to pay for health care could be ruled an unconstitutional infringement on personal liberty, but permitting a thoroughly humiliating strip search that involves a stranger peering at the most private portions of a person's naked body -- for the most trivial offense -- is not. The invasiveness of the search authorized under Florence cannot be understated. The Florence decision not only allows for law enforcement officials to strip you down and search the surface of your body, but allows for a full body and cavity search.
Let's put this into perspective: If you are arrested for even a traffic violation, the Supreme Court has now given law enforcement officials the green light to strip you down and search even your body cavities, regardless of whether or not they believe you possess any dangerous or banned substance. The Constitution, and in particular the Fourth Amendment, exists to protect American citizens from exactly this type of situation and the Supreme Court has severely damaged our Constitutional protections. Simply put, the Supreme Court got it wrong.
The Supreme Court did offer a rationale for its decision, obviously. The High Court concluded that such strip searches are needed to detect injuries, diseases and contraband and to identify tattoos or other gang affiliations. While I do not purport to understand the daily difficulties intrinsic in managing a jail or prison, I believe that this particular invasion of interests is a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy. Constitutionally, it is important to understand the act of being placed in a holding or jail cell do not (or, at least prior to this decision did not) strip you of your constitutionally protected rights. Even inmates that are convicted of what you and I might consider "serious" offenses, including violent crimes, are still entitled to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures" as provided for under the Fourth Amendment, making the Court's decision here with regards to persons being held for minor offenses baffling.
Prior to the Florence decision, prison authorities were allowed to conduct such a search only when they had actual reasonable suspicion to believe that the individual possessed drugs or other contraband. Not only did this approach allow the prison official, who is the person in the best position to assess the situation, to use his or her discretion in applying the search but it limited the intrusion into individual's Fourth Amendment rights.
Now with the recent ruling in Florence, prison officials are given essentially unlimited authority to require these evasive searches for any minor offense with or without reasonable suspicion. The Supreme Court failed to provide any evidence that indicated that the current measures in place were inadequate and the Court did not convincingly articulate that the use of involuntary strip searches for those arrested for minor offenses, absent reasonable suspicion, are necessary in order to furÂther the purported penal interests.
In fact, there are strong reasons to believe they are not justified as current practices (such as pat-frisking all inmates, making inmates go through metal scanners, making inmates shower and use particular delousing agents or bathing supplies, and searching inmates' clothing) are effective. The Court failed to provide a single examÂple of any instance in which contraband was found on an individual through an inspection of their private parts or body cavities which could not have been found under a policy which allowed for such a search based upon reasonable suspicion.
Individuals may be subjected to such an invasive strip search even for the most minor of offenses. Briefs filed by various groups in what are referred to as "Amicus" (meaning "friend of the Court") briefs presented in Florence set forth other instances in which individÂuals arrested for minor offenses had been subjected to the humiliations of a visual strip search. They included individuals detained for such infractions as driving with a noisy mufÂfler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, or riding a bicycle without an audible bell. That reminds me, I better get my muffler and headlight fixed or I might now be subject to a "Constitutional" strip search.
The examples provided in the case's amicus briefs also set out instances where women were strip-searched during periods of lactation or menstruation and even cited instances were victims of sexual violence and even a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years, who was arÂrested for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration, were subjected to similar searches. Again, aren't these examples of abuse (there is no other way to describe these tactics) exactly why the Fourth Amendment exists? The Supreme Court does not think so, and in its 5-4 decision just stripped a significant portion of your Fourth Amendment protections away.
Oh my, if the blogger is really an attorney, he needs to go back to law school and take Constitutional law again. The fact is many constitutional rights (although not all) are stripped once someone is arrested and jailed. Not only does the arrestees not have the right to privacy, but more importantly, he/she loses the consitutional right to move about freely - well, that is what jail is for.
Bloggers often ask about my handle- Now you know why!
Every since Dubya and his Patriot act I'm no longer proud to be an American. When Goverments run ruffshod over the one they're suppose to look out for and protect, then they are no better than the Countries they condem for abusing their people! I hope that someday I can drop the 'Once' from my handle. But the people of this once great Country are going to have to wake up and see what they are loosing daily!
My grandfather once told me "People don't miss the water till the well runs dry!"
Sad but true!
If more and more extreme conservatives keep getting their way this will soon be The Theocratical Facist States of America. Small government my butt.
Never happen in this life!
If it ever does you can bet that the law will be REPEALED in record time!
How quickly they forget- They put their pants on just like us!
Seriously, this is a very dangerous ruling by the Supremes. There are a lot of dirty cops out there that will strip search people simply to get back at them for saying something the cops don't like. Gonna give me some lip? Okay then I'm gonna strip search you, see how you like that one, maybe have my buddies stand around and watch.
Oh yeah, this will be abused big time.
By the way, did you know that the second amendment authorizing the private ownership of guns is a result of liberals? That is correct. Back in the day the concept of private citizens owning guns was a wildly liberal, radical thought. So after you clean your firearms you might wanna hug a liberal.
Patently false, it was at the time thought to be a natural right. Nearly all Colonists owned guns as a function of daily life. When they declared their independence from the British Crown, it attempted to confiscate their arms to remove the means of rebellion. So, later, when the Bill of Rights was written the Founders included the 2nd Amendment to ensure that the people still had the ability to take up arms against the government "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"
The decision to sever ties and take up arms against the most powerful nation in the world may have been radical. However, they were no more so than the abuses they cited were a deviation from precedents in English law. They thought of themselves of liberal, but it hardly had the same meaning then as it does today, no more than the Republicans & Democrats of Lincolns age are a reflection of the parties today.
So, whatever your views are about the right to keep and bear arms, lets not reinvent history to be cute.
Zimmerman is the first of many, I predicvt. When these horrendous acts start occuring over and over again, the backlash will force the courts to limit firearm rights. Why don't we be reasonable and try to firgure out the consequences of what we are asking for.
I agree that people have the right to possess firearms (I do myself). I, however, think it is an endangerment to that right to allow people to carry firearms in places that puts other people in danger because it encourages their use by untrained people (like Zimmerman and this "Stand your ground law"). This puts our very right to keep firearms in danger because the backlash is a'coming.
To those that would disagree, I want to ask you this.
Would you be defending Zimmerman if he were a black man pursuing an unarmed white teenager that he wound up killing? Or, do you think he would have been arrested and held until all the details had become known? Would you say the "stand your ground" law applies for this Zimmerman then to get off of the killing?
Guns are tools, they don't kill people-people who misuse them kill people.
As far as Stand your ground goes- It's a good law. Zimmerman in my opinion is trying to justify his act by hiding behind the law!
He needs to be held responsible for his actions. He was told not to follow the boy and did, therefore he must be held accountable!
Having said that, I don't have a solution to keep this in balance, except to have 100% decent cops, and that will never happen.