Inmate says search at county jail was illegal

MOUNT HOLLY — A federal judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit that challenges the manner in which inmates held for minor offenses are searched at the Burlington County Jail.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez means that as many as 3,900 former and current inmates could be eligible to join a lawsuit filed by former inmate Albert Florence in 2005.

A similar class-action suit against Camden County Jail was settled for $7.5 million last year.

Rodriguez certified the class-action suit on March 20. It can now go to trial.

A class action lawsuit is designed to determine rights and possible remedies for large numbers of persons who are seeking damages for the same grievance.

Florence filed his lawsuit after spending six days in the county jail when he was picked up on a bench warrant for an unpaid fine issued in Essex County. He alleged he was subjected to a full strip and body-cavity search when he was first admitted to the jail.

Essex County is also named in the suit, his lawyer said, because Florence was searched when he was transferred to its jail and spent a day there before authorities realized the warrant was issued improperly. Florence said he paid the fine two years before.

According to the suit, the searches violated his constitutional protection against unreasonable search as a nonviolent offender held on a minor, or non-indictable, offense. The law only permits strip searches when there is a reasonable suspicion that the accused person could be concealing a weapon, drugs or other contraband, the suit contends.

The suit does not challenge the rights of correction officers to strip search those charged with more serious crimes.

The suit said state law defines a strip search as “the removal or rearrangement of clothing for the purpose of visual inspection of the person's undergarments, buttocks, anus, genitals or breasts.”

According to the suit, inmate-search procedures at the Burlington County Jail call for unclothed “visual observations of the inmate's physical body to look for distinguished identifying marks, scars or deformities, signs of illness, injury or disease and/or the concealment of contraband on the inmate's body.”

In a prepared statement issued yesterday, county Solicitor Peter Nelson defended the county's policy.

“Our policies and procedures are in compliance with the New Jersey Administrative Code. Accordingly, the county will vigorously defend itself against this lawsuit,” the statement said.

Susan Chana Lask, the attorney who filed the suit, said the county is not following the law with its visual observation policy.

“That is a joke, how dare them,” she said. “They're playing with semantics. When you're standing naked you are stripped ... It's humiliating, degrading and it violates a person's rights.”

She said she is now seeking to have an injunction ordered against unclothed observations of inmates charged with non-indictable offenses.

“You can't have blanket searches where everybody is treated the same,” she said. “The dad who is behind on child support should not be treated the same as the murderer.”

Lask said current and former inmates should be compensated for the alleged violation. The average award in similar suits, which have been filed throughout the country, has been $2,000, Lask said.

Judge Rodriguez defined those eligible to join the suit as any former or current inmate held on a non-indictable offense at the Burlington or Essex County jails from 2003 to present who were directed by officers to strip naked for inspection without those officers stating they had a reasonable belief that they were concealing prohibited items.

Contact Danielle Camilli at dcamilli@phillyBurbs.com