SUBSCRIBE TODAY!!!

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals has thrown out the drug conviction of a man subjected to a rectal strip search during a traffic stop. Carl Nieves had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute after police found small baggies of crack in his rectum.

Nieves was stopped after the car he was driving rolled back at an intersection and hit a police car. Nieves neither owned the vehicle nor had a valid driver's license. What he did have was a record of two previous drug arrests. Based on those arrests, Hagerstown police conducted a strip search and found the rocks.

That was too much for the appeals court, which noted that any search is an invasion of an individual's privacy, "... but a strip search procedure flies in the face of individual privacy rights. Strip searches, moreover, particularly intrude upon the individual's sanctity of his own body." The "extreme intrusiveness" of strip searches demands well-articulated reasonable suspicion a crime is being committed, wrote Judge Raymond Thieme. And the factors cited by Hagerstown police -- Nieves' prior arrests and the fact that the vehicle was owned by a suspected drug dealer -- did not rise to that level.

"Neither factor alone nor the combination of the two supports the conclusion that a reasonable suspicion was present to justify the strip search," the court said. "Where is the reasonable suspicion that drugs or other contraband are concealed in the particular place they decided to search? There is none," wrote Thieme.

Thieme added that the court was "troubled by the fact that, any time an individual has a prior drug history, that history alone may be used to justify a strip search of the individual upon subsequent arrests for minor offenses. Officers on nothing more than a 'fishing expedition' for narcotics without an articulable suspicion whatsoever will essentially be given carte blanche to violate an individual's privacy when arrested for a minor offense," the court noted.

	Please make a generous donation to support Drug War Chronicle in 2007!

PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail [email protected]. Thank you.

Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Out from the Shadows HEA Drug Provision Drug War Chronicle Perry Fund DRCNet en Español Speakeasy Blogs About Us Home Why Legalization? NJ Racial Profiling Archive Subscribe Donate DRCNet em Português Latest News Drug Library Search special friends links: SSDP - Flex Your Rights - IAL - Drug War Facts StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet) 1623 Connecticut Ave., NW, 3rd Floor, Washington DC 20009 Phone (202) 293-8340 Fax (202) 293-8344 [email protected]