One-dollar strip search verdict is rejected on qualified immunity grounds

This guy sued an Oswego sergeant, claiming the officer subjected him to a manual body cavity search. It took place in the context of felony drug charges. Plaintiff won the trial, but the jury only awarded him one dollar. That may be an empty victory for plaintiff, but the sergeant appeals it anyway, claiming no liability can attach at all because he is entitled to qualified immunity. The Court of Appeals agrees with the sergeant, and the verdict is gone.

The case is Sanchez v. Bonacchi, a summary order issued on October 25. If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that public officials (including police officers) get qualified immunity from suit if the law was not clearly-established at the time of the incident. Officers are not expected to anticipate how appellate courts in the future will resolve complex constitutional issues, so if there is something funky about the case, the officer gets the benefit of the doubt.

The district court denied the sergeant qualified immunity because he "personally conducted a manual body cavity search of Plaintiff before obtaining a judicial warrant, and because Defendant essentially testified that he knew such conduct violated Plaintiff's rights." Interesting. The officer testified that he knew he was violating plaintiff's rights when he conducted the cavity search. What more could a plaintiff want? (And why would the jury only give plaintiff one dollar for this intrusive violation of his physical dignity? Only the jury can answer that question.)

The problem with the district court's analysis is that is focused on the officer's subjective intent in resolving the qualified immunity question. Qualified immunity is an objective test, not a subjective one. So it is not enough for the officer to "admit" he was violating the plaintiff's rights. The question is whether a reasonable officer would have done the same thing. If the answer is yes, then the officer is immune from suit, no matter what he testified to at trial.

The correct test is "whether a right to be free from a warrantless manual body cavity search in the absence of exigent circumstances and a particularized suspicion that evidence of a crime is secreted inside the body cavity was clearly established at the time of the search, in February 2013." In 2013, the Second Circuit held in Gonzalez v. City of Schenectady that, "although we have repeatedly held that the police may not conduct a suspicionless strip or body cavity search of a person arrested for a misdemeanor," neither the Court of Appeals nor the Supreme Court had extended that reasoning to felony drug arrests. This means that cases like plaintiff's (involving felony drug arrests) were not clear constitutional violations, at least by February 2013.

What it means for plaintiff is that verdict is gone, the one-dollar damages award is gone, his attorneys' fees are gone, and the sergeant ultimately wins the case.