Jail loses strip search lawsuit

[ Originally published on: Saturday, October 24, 2009 ]

GREENFIELD -- A strip search procedure previously used by the county jail has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.

The ruling applies to strip searches of detainees awaiting arraignment at the jail by local police departments following an arrest.

Now the case moves into the phase that determines damages awarded for the emotional distress of people who were strip-searched.

According to Franklin County Sheriff Frederick Macdonald, the policy was put in place at the old 19th-century jail where prisoners were able to pass items back and forth between the cells through cell door bars.

'We were strip searching (every new arrival) at the old jail because it was so congested over there & We found all kinds of things on people -- drugs, even a knife,' he said.

Federal Magistrate Judge Kenneth Neiman, however, was not persuaded by the sheriff's arguments.

'The general rule in this circuit appears to now be that strip-searches of all misdemeanor arrestees require reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed or concealing contraband.

'The need for reasonable suspicion stems from the recognition by the First Circuit (Court of Appeals) that strip searches impinge seriously upon Fourth Amendment values, are a severe, if not gross, interference with a person's privacy, and are an offense to the dignity of the individual,' the judge wrote.

The judge noted that a blanket strip-search policy would be allowable if there were 'compelling institutional concerns,' such as a rampant problem of the introduction of contraband to a facility by people carrying materials under their clothing or in body cavities. He found no such problem at the Franklin County Jail.

According to the judge, there were only a handful of cases of people carrying contraband into the jail and in three of those instances the material was found without a strip search.

'An indiscriminate strip-search policy ... cannot be justified simply on the basis of administrative ease in attending to security concerns,' Neiman wrote.

The case against the sheriff's office grew out of a matter involving a Sunderland man named Gregory Garvey who was taken into custody in January 2007 on a warrant that was issued because he did not appear in court on a traffic violation. Garvey said that he never received a notice to appear in court.

For the full version of this story, you may purchase The Recorder electronically, by returning to the home page and clicking under 'E-Edition' on the right side of your screen, or you can purchase the print edition, which is available throughout Franklin County, Massachusetts.

 

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