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Woodbury
County Lawsuit Contributions Grow The following counties have each contributed $150 to aid in Woodbury County's defense of the claims in Rattray v Woodbury County, the strip search case. ISAC thanks these counties for their contributions Appanoose |
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| Woodbury County Strip Search Lawsuit | ||
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9/8/08
Update: The federal judge in the Maureen Rattray strip search
lawsuit denied the plaintiff's motion to certify the lawsuit as a
class action.
If the plaintiff had been successful, it could have potentially added thousands of additional plaintiffs to the lawsuit. Trial is now set for October 2009. |
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10/17/07 Update: The plaintiff's attorney has now filed a motion to have this lawsuit converted into a class action lawsuit. If this motion is granted, the case would no longer be about just Maureen Rattray and her alleged damages. It would be expanded to potentially include claims for every arrestee who has been strip searched in the Woodbury County jail over the last two years. |
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In this case the Plaintiff, Maureen Rattray, was arrested by Sioux City police in August of 2006. She was charged with operating while intoxicated. She was taken to the Woodbury County Jail, where she was booked. The Jail has a policy which requires that every arrestee booked on any charge involving offenses greater than a simple misdemeanor must be strip searched. In accordance with that policy, Ms. Rattray was strip searched before she was placed in the Temporary Holding section of the Jail. On February 13, 2007, Rattray filed a federal lawsuit against the County. She alleges that the search conducted pursuant to this policy violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment. She is seeking an award of damages and attorney fees. Trial is set for February 16, 2009. Here is the lawsuit. Here is the county’s response. Legal Issue: The legal issue presented by this case is whether correctional officers must have individualized, reasonable suspicion, before they can conduct a strip search in a county jail. The Law: In 1979, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979). In Bell, a case challenging a strip search policy in an institution, the Supreme Court held that pretrial detainees retain constitutional rights, including the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, but those rights are subject to limitations based on the fact of confinement and the institutional need to maintain security and order. Specifically, the Court fashioned a reasonableness test requiring a balancing of the constitutional rights of inmates and the interests of penal institutions. The test requires consideration of four factors: (1) The scope of the particular intrusion; (2) The manner in which it is conducted; (3) The place in which it is conducted; and (4) The justification for initiating it. In 1980, the Iowa Legislature amended Iowa Code §804.30, limiting the circumstances under which strip searches could be conducted by members of the law enforcement community. Presumably this was passed in response to Bell. In any case, §804.30 was re-written to prohibit strip searches in cases involving simple misdemeanor charges, except upon what amounts to probable cause. Since the enactment of the current version of §804.30, many counties have re-written their search policies to comply with this amendment. In doing so, these counties have interpreted the current legislation to require probable cause to conduct a strip search on simple misdemeanants, but permit the application of a blanket strip search policy with respect to all others (i.e. serious and aggravated misdemeanants, and felons). Maureen Rattray is challenging this interpretation. She claims that a county cannot conduct a strip search without a specific, individualized, articulable suspicion that an individual either is, or may be concealing weapons, drugs or other contraband. In other words, she maintains that the test enunciated in Bell applies in the case of an OWI arrest, and correctional officers had to have a reasonable suspicion that she was a threat to security before they could conduct a strip search. The Court Cases: There are no reported cases challenging §804.30 or the manner in which it is currently being applied. The leading case from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over Iowa, is probably Jones v. Edwards, 770 F.2d 739, 741-42 (8th Cir. 1985). In that case, the 8th Circuit held that a strip search of an arrestee charged with violating an animal leash law violated the Fourth Amendment where authorities had no reasonable suspicion of concealed weapons or contraband. Importance of This Case: The resolution of this issue will affect every county in Iowa that operates a jail. If Ms. Rattray is right, then Woodbury County will have to change its policy. So, too, will many other jails in this State. Thus, one way or another, the ultimate outcome of the Rattray case will have a direct impact on many other jails in the State. The ISAC Board of Directors sees this as an important lawsuit that raises key issues about jail security. This is why the ISAC President recently wrote a letter asking all counties to contribute towards this lawsuit.
For more information
contact David Vestal at ISAC. |
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