According to New Jersey Real Time News, Albert Florence found himself being arrested for an unpaid fine that he had, in fact, paid. His wife was driving and was pulled over for speeding. Even though he was the passenger, the police checked Mr. Florence’s background and found that a warrant had been put out for the fine. Mr. Florence was detained, was shuffled around from one jail to another, and remained jailed for 6 days before the matter was straightened out. Finally, a very angry judge ordered his release.
Mr. Florence, a well-dressed and employed person, was subjected to an aggressive strip search when initially detained on the non-criminal charge. The search was so aggressive that he was forced to squat while naked, expose himself, and cough. He was forced to undergo the same aggressive and intrusive strip search when he was transferred to the second jail.
Mr. Florence sued. The case of Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders lingered in the system for 7 years. He maintained that his search was unconstitutional under the fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure because he presented no cause for the officials to do such an intrusive search.
The Supreme court voted 5 to 4 against Mr. Florence and against the tens of thousands of people who could be stripped-searched without cause in the future. The person does not even have to be arrested or charged with a crime.
The first implication of the case is that the current Supreme Court is known for voting on political lines. In this case, the ruling favors jail officials and gives them unlimited freedom to decide at will whether to conduct strip searches at detention centers.
The second implication is that this ruling makes such searches universally legal, says that the searches do not violate citizen’s fourth amendment rights, and decides that no one has any protection against being stripped-searched, no matter why they are detained.
Philly.com concludes that people could be aggressively stripped-searched without even being arrested, and cites the case of an older nun who was subjected to a stripped inspection after a trespassing arrest during an antiwar demonstration. In another case, the person was arrested for riding a bicycle for not having an audible bell. That person was also strip-searched.
Anyone who is detained can be stripped-searched to extremely intrusive and aggressive extent, regardless of their situation or alleged offense. The ruling is so draconian that it ignored the limited likelihood that large numbers of detainees would arrive at jail with contraband concealed in a body cavity.
The third implication of the Supreme Court’s “strip search decision” is that abusive search procedures can now easily be used to torture, abuse, intimidate and humiliate detainees with no oversight or external controls. Even innocent victims like Mr. Florence now have no recourse in the courts should they be inappropriately and repeatedly stripped and searched.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority: “Maintaining safety and order at (detention) institutions requires the expertise of correctional officials, who must have substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions to the problems they face,” Kennedy wrote for the majority. “(T)he seriousness of an offense is a poor predictor of who has contraband.”
Dissenting Justice Stephen G. Breyer cited a study of 23,000 people who had been admitted to a detention facility in Orange County, N.J. during a four year period. He maintained that the odds of actual contraband being found are very low. Breyer wrote that the study “…showed that as long as a reasonable suspicion was used, there would have been perhaps one instance of contraband getting smuggled in.”
The fourth implication concerns the extreme lengths to which the current Supreme Court will go. This New York Times analysis examines in great detail the court’s behavior in the health care reform case and in the Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders case. It is clear that the current court is capable of going beyond its power to create law and to eviscerate any part of the Constitution that it wants to.
The final implication of the Supreme Court strip-search decision will be whether Americans will tolerate the current Supreme Court. There is no shortage of talk, as with the Daily Kos, about impeaching some of the more extremist and ethically-challenged justices, that is if the court does not rule itself to be unimpeachable first.