"Court OKs airport groin searches for drugs"

Friday, January 6, 2012

Court OKs airport groin searches for drugs
By Bob Egelko
The San Francisco (CA) Chronicle


An airport security officer can pat-search a passenger's groin area for
hidden drugs, as long as the officer is the same gender and the passenger
doesn't express an objection, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
 
In a case from Seattle, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco upheld a search that found 700 pills of the painkiller oxycodone
in the underwear of a man who was about to board a plane at Seattle-Tacoma
International Airport. The court said an officer who has a passenger's
consent for a pat-down is entitled to search the groin, a common hiding
place for drugs.
 
The passenger, Keith Russell, was stopped by a police officer at the airport
in August 2010 after a ticket agent reported that he had paid cash for a
last-minute, one-way ticket to Anchorage, and was traveling alone without
checked-in luggage. 

Suspecting that Russell, who had a previous drug conviction, might be a drug
courier, the police officer identified himself as a narcotics investigator
and asked for permission to search. 

The court said Russell consented and spread his arms and legs, and the
officer started at his feet, worked his way up to the groin area, pressed
upward and felt an object that proved to be the supply of pills.
 
After unsuccessfully challenging the search in court, Russell pleaded guilty
to illegally possessing the pills for distribution and was sentenced to six
years and eight months in federal prison. He argued in his appeal that he
had never consented to a groin-area search, but the court disagreed.
 
"Narcotics are often hidden on the body in locations that make discovery
more difficult, including the groin area," Judge Margaret McKeown said in
the 3-0 ruling. She said Russell had given "unrestricted consent" to a
search of his outer clothing, and had not said or done anything to object
when the officer neared his groin.
 
A pat-down of a suspect not yet under arrest can include "a careful
exploration of the outer surfaces of a person's clothing all over his or her
body," McKeown said, quoting the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1968 ruling.
 
She said appeals courts have mostly upheld airport pat-downs that included
groin-area searches, and overturned them only when special factors, such as
a search by an officer of the opposite sex, made them unusually intrusive.

The ruling can be read at:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/01/05/11-30030.pdf


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