Cavity search verdict is affirmed after the Circuit initially took it away

This case went to trial in the Northern District of New York. Plaintiff alleged that a police officer violated the Constitution in subjecting him to an unlawful manual body cavity search. The jury found in plaintiff's favor but it only awarded him one dollar. That may sound like a hollow victory for plaintiff, but no police officer wants an adverse verdict on his record, and even a one dollar verdict may produce a large attorneys' fees award for plaintiff's lawyer. So the officer moved post-trial for judgment as a matter of law, claiming entitlement to qualified immunity because the law was not clearly established at the time of the violation to put the officer on notice that he was breaking the law. The trial court denied that motion, but the Court of Appeals agreed with the officer, which means the officer ultimately won the case. But then the unexpected happened, and plaintiff is again the winner.

The case is Sanchez v. Bonacchi, a summary order issued on February 21. This case first reached the Court of Appeals last year. In October 2019, after the district court denied the officer qualified immunity and upheld plaintiff's verdict, the Second Circuit found that the officer is entitled to qualified immunity because the law was not clear at the time of the body cavity search that this maneuver was illegal. The Court (Lynch, Lohier and Sullivan) said that Gonzalez v. City of Schenectady, 728 F.3d 149 (2d Cir. 2013), had muddied the waters in this area because the Court in Gonzalez stated that controlling authority in the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court had not yet held that the rule against suspicionless strip or body cavity searches in misdemeanor cases also applied to felony drug arrests. This  meant that Sanchez could not sue Bonacchi for damages, and the verdict was gone.

But after the Court of Appeals issued the first Sanchez summary order, in December 2019, another panel of the Court of Appeals (Newman, Pooler and Jacobs [in dissent]]) issued Sloley v. VanBramer, 945 F.3d 30 (2d Cir. 2019), which held that, as of 2013, when the search in Sanchez's case took place, it was clearly established that a "visual body cavity search conducted as an incident to a lawful arrest for any offense must be supported by a specific, articulable factual basis supporting a reasonable suspicion to believe the arrestee secreted evidence inside a body cavity." This means that a manual body cavity search, which is more intrusive than a visual cavity search, "must at a minimum be supported by the same reasonable suspicion as a visual cavity search." Sloley is a binding, precedential ruling, which takes precedence over summary orders like Sanchez.

The Sloley ruling was a terrific turn of events for Sanchez. In January 2020, the Court of Appeals (Lynch, Lohier and Sullivan) in Sanchez's case sua sponte recalled the mandate in the Sanchez summary order, vacating that ruling in light of the Sloley decision. The Court ordered the parties in this case to brief the issue of how the Slolely ruling affects the Sanchez case. On February 21, the Court of Appeals formally vacated the October 2019 ruling in Sanchez's case and reinstated the verdict, holding that Slolely demonstrates the law law governing plaintiff's case was in fact clearly established, the officer does not get qualified immunity, and the verdict should stand after all. Sanchez only gets one dollar, but hey, a win is a win, right?