Strip Searches by Law Enforcement Officers (Part II)

This blog post is divided in two parts. This is Part II. Part I was posted yesterday. That post offered a general introduction, defined a strip search, and discussed the legality of consent searches involving strip searches. This post discusses the legality of nonconsensual strip searches. As mentioned in Part I, strip searches at jails and prisons are discussed here by Jamie Markham and are not the subject of these posts. North Carolina appellate cases. These cases are discussed in chronological order because they sometimes build upon or distinguish prior cases. The facts in strip search cases are often critical to a court’s ruling, and because of space limitations not all the pertinent facts can be included here, so the reader will need to read the cases to gain a better understanding of the rulings. The North Carolina Court of Appeals in State v. Smith, 118 N.C. App. 106 (1995), ruled that a search was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. However, the dissenting opinion disagreed, and the North Carolina Supreme Court in a per curiam ruling without an opinion, 342 N.C. 407 (1995), reversed the court of appeals and adopted the dissenting opinion, thus upholding the search. Officers had probable cause to believe that the defendant possessed cocaine and specific information that the cocaine would be concealed in or under his crotch. Based on these facts, the dissenting opinion stated that the officers had authority to make a warrantless search of the defendant, including his crotch area, after the officers had [...]