New York Criminal Attorney Blog
Under the Fourth Amendment, individuals have a right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The word “unreasonable” can have different meanings in different contexts, but a recent case coming out of the Supreme Court of New York, Third Department, provides interesting case law for one of these contexts. The case serves as a reminder that if you ever have doubts about whether you have been unreasonably searched by a police officer, it is never a bad idea to speak with a New York criminal defense attorney to see if you have options to suppress whatever evidence the officer might have found.
Bodily Examinations
The April 2024 case lists out three kinds of bodily examinations (strip searches) that are common after an officer conducts an arrest: the strip search, the “visual body cavity inspection,” and the “manual body cavity search.” A strip search is when an officer has an individual undress and then visually looks over that person’s body. No physical contact is involved. A visual body cavity inspection, on the other hand, is when the officer visually inspects the individual’s body parts below the waistline. In a manual body cavity search, the officer goes so far as to make contact with the person’s genital or anal area to see if that person is hiding anything there.
In order to initiate a manual body cavity search (the most extreme of the three), an officer must have a warrant from the court, except in emergency situations. Courts recognize that this kind of search is a severe intrusion on a person’s right to privacy, therefore making it difficult for an officer to perform this search without a court’s permission.
In the case before the Third Department, an officer searched the defendant after finding evidence related to using and selling heroin in the place he was staying. The officer conducted a manual body cavity search. During the search, the officer pulled out 61 paper folds of heroin and 11 bags of crack cocaine from the area between the defendant’s buttocks.
On appeal, the court noted that the officer did not have a warrant to conduct this kind of search. And, said the court, there were no emergency circumstances at play – the officer could have asked for a warrant before intruding on the defendant’s privacy in such an extreme way.
The court ruled that the officer’s search was unreasonable. This meant that the defendant’s motion to suppress, which the trial court had previously denied, was granted. His conviction of criminal possession of drugs was reversed and his indictment was dismissed.
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