Strip-searching Doe v. Groody

Hat tip: Memeorandum...

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Patterico comments:

The question at issue was whether the warrant, when read together with the affidavit, covered the other occupants (or at least provided the police a good-faith basis to believe that it did). I heard Erwin Chemerinsky on Hewitt today claiming to have read the decision, yet he didn’t even mention that the issue was the scope of the warrant. He just ranted about how Alito wrote a decision protecting cops from liability for strip-searching a 10-year-old.

I can’t yet say whether I agree with Alito’s dissent; my initial impression is that, while Alito has some good points about how to read warrants, the majority has the better of the argument. But it’s only an initial impression; I don’t criticize decisions until I have read them thoroughly.

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John Hinderaker comments:

The majority held that the warrant did not authorize the officers to search anyone but the drug dealer himself. Alito disagreed. In my opinion, Alito got much the better of the argument. You can judge for yourself by reading the decision here. Alito wrote:

First, the best reading of the warrant is that it authorized the search of any persons found on the premises. Second, even if the warrant did not contain such authorization, a reasonable police officer could certainly have read the warrant as doing so, and therefore the appellants are entitled to qualified immunity.

Voice of Reason comments:

the crowd over at Democratic Underground is having a field day with. Let's look at a few choice comments:

Although the case is technical, what it boils down to is this: Alito approves of cops strip-searching little pre-pubescent 10 year old girls. Read that again: Alito approves of cops strip-searching little prepubescent 10 year old girls.

Scalito's a creep. When a man thinks like that, you have to wonder what he's done to his own children.

The whole case just makes me shiver. I have daughters that age. Who wouldn't I try to kill, cop or not, if they tried to do that to my babies? What's more, Scarlito has a teenage daughter. And he'd let the cops do that to HER?

For a ten year old prepubescent girl that's tantamount to a lesbian rape. And to have your Mommy powerlessly forced to watch! Jesus! You couldn't show that in a Quentin Tarrantino movie w/o an NC 17 rating! Larry Flynt would be banned in Cincinnati if he showed that in Hustler. But Scalito thinks it's OK. Let's destroy him with this. He's a sick, perverted rape-enabler.

Morons. Should ten-year-old girls ever be strip searched? Whether the answer is affirmative or negative, that was not what Alito was called upon to decide, and it is not what he should have considered. Here's what was at issue: <snip> The question before the Third Circuit in this case was whether the reading given the warrant by the executing officers went beyond the bounds established by Vantresca.

His conclusion?

Personally, I don't think it did. The officers clearly acted in good faith and in accordance with what they believed was their authority. The only question is whether their belief was reasonable, and given the contents of the affidavit attached to the warrant and the warrant's clear deference to the affidavit on other matters, I believe it is. But again, this is a matter on which reasonable people can disagree.