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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 ... can not be justified simply on the basis of administrative ease in attending to security concerns," Neiman wrote.

2007 case

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.

The original case against Garvey was based on a minor traffic crash that he had in Whately where it was discovered that his Massachusetts driver's license had been suspended while he was living in Mississippi because he had not paid excise tax in this state several years before.

According to Howard Friedman, Garvey's attorney, his client paid the outstanding tax right after the Whately citation was issued, and the case was dismissed as soon as it came to court.

The case against the sheriff began because, while he was held overnight pending a court hearing the next morning, Garvey was subjected to a strip search in which he was forced to disrobe and allow the correctional officers to inspect his buttocks and genitals.

"The officer had no reason to suspect that Mr. Garvey had any weapons or contraband hidden on his person.

"The officer did not find anything as a result of the strip search," Friedman said.

Garvey was subjected to another strip search the next morning before he was transported to the court for his hearing.

According to Garvey, the experience left him feeling "humiliated, degraded and violated."

Friedman said that Garvey feels vindicated by his victory in court. "He told me that this is America and what happened to him isn't right," the lawyer said.

Ultimately the suit was filed by Friedman as a class action, the class in question being made up of people who were strip searched at the jail between March 27, 2004, and February 25, 2007.

According to court records, the number of people eligible to take part in the suit could come to as many as 400.

"It was a large number of people, so it will require a large amount of money," he added.

Friedman says that he has won similar cases against jails in Hampshire, Plymouth and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts and York County in Maine. In Northampton, the sheriff settled the matter in 2007 for $205,000.
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Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/10/24/franklin-county-jail-strip-search-unconstitutional