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Be aware that private security personnel outnumber police officers in the United States by three to one. As a result, you may be more likely to be confronted by a security guard than by a police officer. You must also be aware of the following places where security personnel (governmental or otherwise) are permitted to search you without a warrant...
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During a legitimate traffic stop, police may order the driver and any passengers out of the vehicle. This rule is intended to protect officers' safety, but it's often used for investigatory purposes...
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Yes. Police can, will, and often do lie; especially if it helps them make arrests. The rules regarding entrapment usually tip in favor of law-enforcement, so police won't hesitate to trick you into incriminating yourself or others...
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Your rights do not disappear if the officer threatens to call in the dogs, so don't let this all-too-common tactic intimidate you into consenting to a search. You have several options...
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Generally not. The Bill of Rights protections that matter most during police encounters are mandated by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and all states are required to follow them. States can offer more protection of these rights, but not less. There are some variations regarding...
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Simply put, the number of arrests an officer makes is a major factor used to determine his job performance. Police officers know that the easiest way to make arrests is to find people in possession of illegal drugs, so they want to search everyone they can find...
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As a general rule, searches conducted without a valid search warrant signed by a judge violate the Fourth Amendment, but like most rules of law, there are a number of explicit exceptions. In fact, most searches occur without warrants because police take advantage of these exceptions to the Fourth Amendment...
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No. If a police officer asks your permission to search, you are under no obligation to consent. The main reason why officers ask is because they don't have enough evidence to search without your consent. Don't expect an officer to tell you of your right not to consent. Any time you consent to a search request you are naively waiving your constitutional rights.
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Unfortunately, many people get fooled by some version of this commonly used police officer's line: "Everything will be easier if you just cooperate". That's true to some extent -- it will make things much easier for the police officer who's trying to arrest you! -- but when it comes to you consenting to searches and answering incriminating questions, it couldn't be further from the truth...
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Everyone should be trained to assert their constitutional rights under the 4th Amendment in order to avoid the hassle and humiliation of police misconduct and illegal searches. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report on citizen-police contacts...
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No. The Supreme Court has never ruled that police must present the warrant when performing a search. The purpose of the warrant is to...
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No. We teach people that they have rights, and that these rights are secured by the principal documents that guarantee our civil liberties -- the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. An informed individual who invokes his constitutional protections is doing exactly what our nation's founders intended. They created these documents to...
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This is one of those "it depends on the circumstances" questions. Police can obtain consent to search from anyone with control over the property; however any occupant of a residence can refuse consent, even if other occupants agree to a search. Unfortunately, you must be present in order to assert your refusal. The Supreme Court has ruled that...
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No. The courts have made it clear that police officers do not have to tell people that they can refuse to consent to a warrantless search. Also, contrary to the belief perpetuated by popular police television shows, a person will not be read their rights subsequent to being taken into custody. A person only needs to be Mirandized when...
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Traffic stops typically occur as a result of suspected moving violations committed by the driver of the vehicle. Passengers cannot be held responsible for the driver's conduct and are generally free to leave, unless police become suspicious of them during the course of the stop...
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Written by Scott Morgan, FYR
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Thursday, 26 March 2009 00:00 |
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If there's one substance scary and dangerous enough to justify searching a 13-year-old girl's genitals, it would have to be...extra-strength Advil:
She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, "they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side," she said. "They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear."
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21. [NYT]
This story made me shudder twice, first when I learned of Savana Redding's degrading treatment, and again when I considered the very real possibility that the current Supreme Court may conclude that such sickening behavior by school officials is permissible under the 4th Amendment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found that the search violated Redding's right against unreasonable searches, but the outcome could be very different once the Supreme Court weighs in on the matter. As a general rule, it's not a good sign when the Supreme Court decides to review a good 4th Amendment ruling from the 9th Circuit. The Court will have to determine whether the school officials' suspicions were reasonable based on the available information and whether the search was an appropriate response to their concerns.
If they run into any trouble sorting it all out, I recommend looking up "unreasonable" in the dictionary.
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Comments
You would think that a government organization such as the school board would HAVE to abide by the United States constitution, but apparently the opposite seems to prevail.
The 1969 case you are recalling was Tinker v. Des Moines Iowa SD. It involved a few students who expressed their objections to the war in Viet-Nam by wearing black armbands in silent protest. They sued for violation of their first amendment freedom of speech (expression) rights. Their case was thrown out at level one. No cause of action. The appeal failed at level two. Level three the USSC said "students (and employees) do not shed their constitutional rights at the school house gate". Who knew? Vegas was not even taking bets on Tinker. Few folks, if any, were willing to wager money that the kids would prevail. The Tinker kids had two chances to win, slim and none. And Slim was on death row in Texas and Nun was doing a retreat in the Himalaya's."Back in the day", as they say...today, if you were in trouble in school, you were in double trouble when you went home.The so-called "child abuse" mind set had not yet set in. Kids had no constitutional rights like the 8th amendment and its protection from cruel & unusual punishment. Students could be punished paddled, or worse. A student could be denied playground privileges by the school and grounded by pop until high school graduation, but the student never had grounds to sue parents or principals. Principals had powers that ranged from immunity to infallability. Loco Parentis ruled the day. If a student sued his family or the school district, the student was thought to be loco. Since Tinker was decided forty years ago, many more student cases have been decided by the USSC. In essence, most of them say that "the constitutional rights of students are not co-extensive with the constitutional rights of adults". (That quote is from the Fraser freedom of speech case from Washington State, about 20 years after Tinker, circa 1987).
However, the Monroe case, a few years ago, said students can sue for "deliberate indifference". The strip search in the Redding case does not pass my smell test as being constitutionally valid, based on the facts as reported. I think the school district (and maybe the assistant principal) will be out a lot of money after the USSC rules on Redding.
There have been a surprisingly high number of cases reported in law books involving strip searches of students. My sense and my experience combine to tell the intuitive side of my brain, that for every strip search that goes to trial, and is then published in a law book, there are ten more strip searches that never make it to the court house gate.
I have been on the phone dozens of times since 1980 giving counsel to school districts who have had teachers, or other employees, reported for conducting strip searches. Usually, my advice went something like this: "Do not waste time and money on lawyers. We all know the victim is going to be receiving some money. What we do not know, is how much."
Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the (5-4) majority in the Monroe case of "deliberate indifference", and she retired a few years ago. Rehnquist died soon thereafter and I suspect he went to the hereafter a/k/a the BIG BENCH in the sky. Roberts and Alito were Bush's appointments to the USSC to replace O'Connor and Rehnquist. Kennedy loves being the swing vote in close cases, which is the role O'Connor used to have.
So, as confident as I am that this is a clear case of deliberate indifference, maybe flipping a coin to see who prevails, is a better strategy if I am going to wager on the outcome of Redding.
-- No, you can't have my rights, I'm not done using them!
Of course, they never searched the teacher...
That being said, I don't know how the Supreme Court is going to come out on this except to say that it will be 5-4 with Kennedy as the swing vote. I suppose that Alito might also get on board with Redding but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Whatever the outcome, if someone ever does this to my kid and the law won't protect them, I will even if that means going to a prison for a year or two for assault w/ intent to do great bodily harm. The only person that has a right to strip search my daughter without a search warrant is her mother, or in a situation where she cannot be reached and it is absolutely necessary, me. If necessary I will home school her to keep something like this from happening to her.