Does a Search Warrant for a Person Authorize a Strip Search?

Most search warrants are for homes or offices. Some are for vehicles. Less often, a search warrant is for a person. See generally G.S. 15A-241 (defining a search warrant as an order authorizing the search of “designated premises, vehicles, or persons”). When a search warrant authorizes the search of a person, how intensive may the search be? Specifically, may the executing officer conduct a strip search? Yes. In North Carolina, the answer generally is yes. The leading case is State v. Johnson, 143 N.C. App. 207 (2001). The case arose in Chapel Hill when officers came to suspect the defendant of distributing drugs. They obtained a search warrant for his home and his person. They found weapons and scales in the home, then searched the defendant: An initial search of the defendant's person revealed almost $2,000.00 in small denominations. The police then asked the defendant to remove his clothing and to bend over at the waist. When he did, the officers saw a piece of plastic protruding from his anus. The officers asked the defendant to remove the package from his anus and found that it contained seventeen (17) individually packaged bags of what was later determined to be crack cocaine. The defendant argued that the search violated the Fourth Amendment because the applicant did not “articulate specific reasons in [the] application why a strip search was necessary,” but the court of appeals ruled that the strip search was reasonable given that drugs may “readily be concealed on the person so [...]