Stanley v. Henson, 02-2806.

• Decision Date: 28 July 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-2806.,02-2806.
• Parties: Lolita STANLEY and Larry Stanley, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Anita HENSON, female employee of Vigo County Sheriff's Department, William R. Harris, in his official capacity as Vigo County Sheriff, and Jeffrey Ennen, Lieutenant, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

337 F.3d 961

Lolita STANLEY and Larry Stanley, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Anita HENSON, female employee of Vigo County Sheriff's Department, William R. Harris, in his official capacity as Vigo County Sheriff, and Jeffrey Ennen, Lieutenant, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 02-2806.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 28, 2003.

Decided July 28, 2003.

Marilyn A. Moores (argued), Cohen & Malad, Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Craig M. McKee (argued), Wilkinson, Goeller, Modesitt, Wilkinson & Drummy, Terre Haute, IN, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before EASTERBROOK, MANION, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

KANNE, Circuit Judge.

On the night of January 30, 1998, Lolita Stanley was arrested by Terre Haute, Indiana police officers, facing misdemeanor charges of battery on a police officer and resisting arrest. She was taken to the Vigo County jail, where jail officer Anita Henson guided her through the jail's admission procedures. Officer Henson first conducted a pat-down search of Ms. Stanley while she was fully clothed; that search turned up no weapons or other contraband. Officer Henson took down Ms. Stanley's personal information, photographed and fingerprinted her.

Ms. Stanley was then required to go through the jail's clothing-exchange procedure. Officer Henson directed her to a small, doorless room near the booking area. The room was partially divided by a cinder-block wall approximately four feet in height, behind which a toilet was located. Mounted on the wall near the booking area was a video camera, which Ms. Stanley initially believed was filming the area in which she was changing (she subsequently learned that the camera does not film that area). Officer Henson provided Ms. Stanley with a jail-issued uniform and told her to remove all her street clothing, except for her underpants, to change into the uniform. Ms. Stanley was not wearing a brassiere at that time, requiring her to expose her breasts as she changed. While Ms. Stanley disrobed (in the front portion of the room, not behind the cinder-block wall), Officer Henson remained in the room, continuously observing her until she was dressed in the jail uniform, but at no time did Officer Henson touch Ms. Stanley nor did she conduct any visual inspection of Ms. Stanley's body cavities. The entire exchange process took approximately two minutes. Ms. Stanley was then taken to a cell where she remained with several other women, but she was never introduced into the jail's general population.

Later that morning, superior officers of the Terre Haute Police Department reviewed Ms. Stanley's arrest and ordered her immediate release from custody; all criminal charges against her were eventually dropped. Ms. Stanley then was permitted to change back into the clothes in which she had arrived at the jail, but in the same room and under substantially the same procedures and conditions as when she had originally changed into the jail uniform—that is, in the small, doorless room under the continuous observation of a female jail officer known only as "Joanie."

Ms. Stanley and her husband Laurence Stanley subsequently brought this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking damages for being subjected to the clothing-exchange procedure, which Ms. Stanley claims violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment.¹ She contends that the jail's clothing-exchange policy subjected her to an intrusive strip search without regard to the particular charges against her (which she says were minor) or to her individual circumstances: she had no previous arrest record, an earlier pat-down search uncovered no weapons or other contraband, and jail officials had no suspicion that she was concealing any weapons or drugs. Subjecting her to a strip search on such grounds, she says, amounted to a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

After the parties submitted a joint stipulation of facts and briefed their arguments, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant officials. The court first held that while the clothing exchange procedure employed by the Vigo County jail did constitute a search, it was not a "strip search" as the district court defined that term. Stanley v. Gentry, 2002 WL 1821793, at *4, No. 00-0053-C-T/H, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14710, at *14 (S.D.Ind. Jun. 5, 2002). The court then found the search to be reasonable under the circumstances and therefore constitutional. Id. at 2002 WL 1821793 at *6, *19.

ANALYSIS

We review the grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing all the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. See Doe v. Heck, 327 F.3d 492, 508 (7th Cir.2003).

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process guarantee, protects individuals against unreasonable searches of their persons, homes, and effects. See U.S. CONST. amend. IV. Included within the Amendment's protection is the right to be free from unreasonable searches of one's unclothed body. See Doe v. Calumet City, Illinois, 754 F.Supp. 1211, 1218 (N.D.Ill.1990) (recognizing that "deeply imbedded in our culture ... is the belief that people have a reasonable expectation not to be unclothed involuntarily, to be observed unclothed or to have their `private' parts observed or touched by others"). While the Fourth Amendment generally requires that the issuance of a warrant, supported by probable cause, precede any search, the Supreme Court has recognized several exceptions to the warrant requirement, including so-called "stationhouse" searches of individuals arrested by the police. See Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 645-46, 103 S.Ct. 2605, 77 L.Ed.2d 65 (1983); Mary Beth G. v. City of Chicago, 723 F.2d 1263, 1270 (7th Cir.1983). As this Court has stated, however, "custodial searches incident to arrest must still be reasonable ones.... This type of police conduct must [still] be tested by the Fourth Amendment's general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures." Id. at 1270-71 (quotations omitted).

As an initial matter, we address the question of whether the observed clothing-exchange process at issue in this case was a "strip search." In finding that Ms. Stanley had not been subjected to a "strip search" (rather, merely a generic "search") as that term had been used by this Court, the district court focused on the fact that she was never fully naked during the clothing exchange—the jail's policy was to require inmates to remove clothing down to their undergarments before donning the jail uniform—and that it was merely by chance that she was not wearing a brassiere at the time of her admission into the jail. In response, Ms. Stanley has brought to our attention a number of cases which define a strip search as something less than full nudity, see, e.g., Justice v. City of Peachtree City, 961 F.2d 188, 190 (11th Cir.1992) (treating as a strip search the police order to "strip down to her panties," with no inspection of body cavities), as well as the statutes defining a "strip search" from 14 states—all but two of which include within their definition an inspection of a person's undergarments. See, e.g., 725 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/103-1(d) (2003) (defining "strip search" as "having an arrested person remove or arrange some or all of his or her clothing so as to permit a visual inspection of the genitals, buttocks, anus, female breasts or undergarments of such person" (emphasis added)).

The defendant officers contend that the clothing exchange was not a "strip search" but rather a "routine security and admission procedure at a detention facility." (Appellee's Br. at 9.) The presence of a jail officer who continuously observed Ms. Stanley as she exchanged her clothing, however, suggests that this was more than an administrative procedure for changing into a jail uniform; it implies that the officer's purpose was to watch over Ms. Stanley to ensure that nothing illicit was brought into or out of the jail. See Johnson v. Phelan, 69 F.3d 144, 145 (7th Cir.1995) (noting that "[o]bservation is a form of search"); see also Heck, 327 F.3d at 510 ("When the Fourth Amendment was ratified, as now, to `search' meant `to look over or through for the purpose of finding something; to explore; to examine by inspection....'" (quoting Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33 n. 1, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001))). The observed clothing exchange thus must be viewed as a search (for weapons or other contraband) of Ms. Stanley. Whether we further label this process a "strip search" or merely a "search" is unimportant, as the analysis remains the same.²

In Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), the Supreme Court identified the framework in which searches of pretrial detainees in custody are to be analyzed. In that case, the plaintiffs challenged the detention facility's policy of conducting strip searches, including visual inspection of the inmates' body cavities, following every contact visit with a person from outside of the facility. Id. at 558, 99 S.Ct. 1861. While acknowledging that "this practice instinctively gives us the most pause," the Court held that such searches were reasonable given the circumstances, and thus did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In so holding, the Court noted that balancing the "significant and legitimate security interests of the institution against the privacy interests of the inmates" led to the conclusion that such searches were fully consistent with the Constitution, even when based on less than probable cause. Id. at 560, 99 S.Ct. 1861. The Court then outlined a general test for reasonableness:

The test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application. In each case, it requires a balancing of the need for the particular search against the invasion of personal rights that the search entails. Courts must consider the scope of the particular...