Roberts Sr. v. State of RI, 00-1752

• Decision Date: 08 December 2000
• Docket Number: No. 00-1752,00-1752
• Citation: 239 F.3d 107
• Parties: (1st Cir. 2001) CRAIG L. ROBERTS, SR., Plaintiff, Appellee, v. STATE OF RHODE ISLAND, GEORGE VOSE, IN HIS CAPACITY AS DIRECTOR OF THE RHODE ISLAND DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Defendants, Appellants. Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 107

239 F.3d 107 (1st Cir. 2001)

CRAIG L. ROBERTS, SR., Plaintiff, Appellee, v. STATE OF RHODE ISLAND, GEORGE VOSE, IN HIS CAPACITY AS DIRECTOR OF THE RHODE ISLAND DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Defendants, Appellants.

No. 00-1752

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

Heard December 8, 2000

Decided February 13, 2001

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND

[Hon. Mary M. Lisi, U.S. District Judge] Rebecca Tedford Partington, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Sheldon Whitehouse, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellants.

Gregory A. Bolzle, with whom Brown, Todd & Heyburn, PLLC and Thomas W. Kelly, were on brief, for appellee.

Before Torruella, Chief Judge, Bownes, Senior Circuit Judge, and Saris,^* District Judge.

TORRUELLA, Chief Judge.

Two Rhode Island Department of Corrections ("DOC") policies provide that all males committed to the state prison be subject to a strip search and a visual body cavity search¹ upon incarceration as a matter of routine procedure. Appellee Craig Roberts challenged these policies as unconstitutional. The district court agreed that the policies were unconstitutional, holding that this Court's decision in Swain v. Spinney, 117 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 1997), required that corrections officers have a reasonable suspicion that an individual was concealing contraband prior to conducting a strip and visual body cavity search. Roberts v. Rhode Island, No. 99-259ML, slip op. at 13-17 (D.R.I. March 16, 2000). Rhode Island now appeals. Because we find that the Rhode Island policy does not meet the reasonableness test of Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 559 (1979), we affirm the holding of the district court.

BACKGROUND

On April 20, 1999, Roberts was a passenger in a car stopped for expired registration stickers. After a computer check revealed that Roberts was the subject of an "outstanding body attachment,"² the officers performed a pat-down frisk and placed him in custody. Although Roberts produced a September 1, 1998 order withdrawing the attachment, he was not released. Instead, he was transported to the Intake Services Center ("Intake") at the Adult Correctional Institution ("ACI") in Cranston, Rhode Island.

Upon reaching Intake, Roberts was photographed, fingerprinted, and asked to submit to a blood test, which he refused. Officers then performed a strip search and visual bodily cavity search, pursuant to two DOC policies.³ As part of the search, corrections officers inspected the inside of Roberts' mouth and nose and the soles of his feet. Roberts was also ordered to spread his buttocks, at which time officers visually inspected his body cavity. At no time during the search did an officer touch Roberts. No contraband was found on Roberts' person. Roberts was subjected to a second similar search the same day before being transferred and ultimately released from police custody.

Appellants argue that the strip and visual body cavity search is necessary because of the unique nature of the Intake facility. Unlike many jurisdictions, Rhode Island does not have regional facilities to house pretrial detainees prior to trial and sentencing. Intake acts as the receiving facility for all male inmates committed to the care and custody of the DOC, including those arrested on an outstanding warrant, ordered held without bail, or unable to post bail.⁴ Because Rhode Island has a unified prison system, pretrial detainees held at Intake mix with the general prison population. Intake is itself considered a maximum security prison.

DISCUSSION

Both convicted prisoners and pretrial detainees retain constitutional rights despite their incarceration, including basic Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. Bell, 441 U.S. at 545. However, those rights may be subject to restrictions and limitations based on the fact of confinement, the legitimate goals and policies of the penal institution, and the need of the institution to maintain security and internal order. Id. at 545-46. "When an institutional restriction infringes a specific constitutional guarantee," - here, the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, - "the practice must be evaluated in the light of the central objective of prison administration, safeguarding institutional security." Id. at 546. This evaluation is a deferential one, giving due regard to the "professional expertise of corrections officials," id. at 548 (citing Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 827 (1974)), and the limited role of the judiciary in operating and supervising correctional facilities, see id. (citing Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 405 (1974)).

In Bell, the Supreme Court specifically addressed a strip and visual body cavity search conducted of all inmates after every contact with an outside visitor. Id. at 558. Although the Court admitted that the practice of examining inmates' body cavities "instinctively [gave it] the most pause," the Court upheld the search. Id. In determining that the search was reasonable, the Court balanced "the need for the particular search against the invasion of personal rights that the search entails." Id. at 559. More specifically, the Court instructed courts to "consider the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted." Id. After weighing these considerations, the Court found that "visual body cavity searches [in the prison context] can 'be conducted on less than probable cause.'" Swain, 117 F.3d at 6 (quoting Bell, 441 U.S. at 560).

This Court held in Swain that, at least in the context of prisoners held in local jails for minor offenses, the Bell balance requires officers to have a reasonable suspicion that a particular detainee harbors contraband prior to conducting a strip or visual body cavity search. Swain, 117 F.3d at 7. Appellants argue that the heightened security concerns of the Intake facility allow for per se searches of committed inmates even absent individualized suspicion. Appellants also suggest that the requirement of judicial intervention (i.e., either an outstanding warrant or a judicial order) to commit an inmate to Intake changes the Bell calculation. We reconsider the Bell factors in light of these distinctions to determine if the Rhode Island policies are unreasonable searches prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.

We begin with the "scope of the particular intrusion." Bell, 441 U.S. at 559. In Swain, we recognized that visual body cavity searches "impinge seriously upon" Fourth Amendment values. 117 F.3d at 7. We had previously termed such searches a "severe if not gross interference with a person's privacy." Arruda v. Fair, 710 F.2d 886, 887 (1st Cir. 1983). And although our language has not been as strident as that of the Seventh Circuit, see Mary Beth G. v. City of Chicago, 723 F.2d 1263, 1272 (7th Cir. 1983) (describing such searches as, among other things, "demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, embarrassing and repulsive"), we consider such searches an "extreme intrusion" on personal privacy and "an offense to the dignity of the individual," Wood v. Clemons, 89 F.3d 922, 928 (1st Cir. 1996). The search required by Rhode Island DOC policy is no exception: although Roberts was admittedly not touched by corrections officials, he was forced to display his genitals, as well as to spread his legs so that officials could observe his body cavity.

We next turn to the government interest at stake here, that is, the "justification for initiating" the search. Bell, 441 U.S. at 559. In this case, that interest is primarily a concern for institutional security. This Court has recognized that institutional security is a legitimate need of law enforcement, and may provide a compelling reason for a warrantless strip search absent reasonable suspicion of individual wrongdoing. Swain, 117 F.3d at 7. Indeed, in Bell, the Supreme Court allowed searches of all inmates who had entertained visitors, even if there was no suspicion that an individual inmate had received contraband from a visitor. In Arruda, we upheld a search of all inmates returning from the law library and infirmary, as well as those inmates receiving visitors. 710 F.2d at 888. We focused on the fact that the prison was a maximum-security one, that the inmate in question had been confined to a "special security area" for particularly dangerous inmates, and that the "record [contained] a lengthy history of prison contraband problems." Id. In contrast, we were unconvinced by institutional security concerns in Swain, because the arrestee there was held in a local jail and posed "no risk" of contact with other prisoners. 117 F.3d at 8.

The institutional security concerns in play here fall somewhere between those exhibited in Swain, which were insufficient to support a search, and those in Arruda and Bell, which made broad-based searches without individual suspicion reasonable. For the reasons detailed below, we think that the Rhode Island policies fall on the Swain side of the constitutional line.

First, unlike in Bell or Arruda, Rhode Island does not limit its searches to prisoners who have had contact with outside visitors. Courts have given prisons far more leeway in conducting searches of inmates with outside contact than in searching everyone, simply because such visits often allow smuggling of contraband. See Bell, 441 U.S. at 558; Masters v. Crouch, 872 F.2d 1248, 1253 (6th Cir. 1989) (citing the "obvious risk" that visits may be used to introduce contraband); Arruda, 710 F.2d at 888. Although inmates such as Roberts certainly have the opportunity to introduce contraband to the prison, and may have even done so in the past, it is far less likely that smuggling of contraband will occur subsequent to an arrest (when the detainee is normally in handcuffed custody) than during a contact visit that may have been arranged solely for the purpose of...