Strip search suit becomes class-action

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, which means the case can 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 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 reasonable suspicion that the accused could be concealing a weapon, drugs or other contraband, the suit contends.

The suit does not challenge the rights of 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, 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.”