Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

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There are so so many things wrong with this situation i don't even know where to begin.

The judge granted a warrant, an almost facially invalid one (and it turns out, completely invalid for other reasons), but will still be immune from anything here.

The DA will be immune from anything here. The Officers will claim qualified immunity, and may or may not win.

At least there is supreme court precedent that should have put them on notice: Winston v. Lee - 470 U.S. 753 (1985)

"(a) A compelled surgical intrusion into an individual's body for evidence implicates expectations of privacy and security of such magnitude that the intrusion may be "unreasonable" even if likely to produce evidence"

Here, it wasn't even likely to produce evidence.

The doctor will certainly be sued for, among other things, battery, false imprisonment, etc.

(Looks close, they threw some other stuff in there. Here is the complaint: http://www.scribd.com/doc/181747773/Complaint-David-Eckert-v... )

Thanks for linking that. It appears that we've found the real reason the officers decided to put the man through this ordeal:

(Excerpt from complaint -- emphasis mine) 24. Plaintiff asked Defendant Rodriquez if he was free to leave, which Defendant Rodriquez contends that he found rude. 25. Defendant Rodriquez told Plaintiff he suspected Plaintiff of having illegal drugs in his car and proceeded to interrogate Plaintiff on the matter.

The officer felt that he'd not been shown correct respect by the victim and then decided to make him pay. To be honest, I'm not sure how much I blame the doctors in this fiasco, because I don't know what sort of legal protections are available to them if they were to refuse to carry out the invasive operations. Do doctors in the US typically have a legal counsel who can advise them if a warrant is valid, or what operations an officer with a warrant can demand? I know I'd have no idea if a warrant were valid, or what the officer could compel me to do.

A doctor cannot be compelled to do a body cavity search.

I think it's been well established at this point that anyone can be compelled to do anything by law enforcement. The supposed corrective mechanism comes after the fact so you're helpless in the interim. Take Mr. Eckert's case for example. What would have happened if he had started screaming in the hospital for someone to call the police? My money's on nothing. "Just a mental case, nothing to see here" they might say. You truly have no recourse in the moment.

The professional breaches of ethics are shocking and horrible, but the worst part of this is that it's bad test case for the legality of more and more invasive/dangerous bodily searches.

If the warrant was invalid to begin with, my concern is that a court won't be able to strike down the medical procedures as unconstitutional because the search itself was unconstitutional on simpler grounds.

I hope Eckert will win a civil suit, but my guess is that the worst part of this story will be the lack of deep constitutional scrutiny.

I am not a lawyer.

One way for the issues to get a decent amount of scrutiny would be in the officers' appeal of their loss of certification, and the medical workers' appeal of their loss of license.

The best outcome in my mind here is that the doctors lose their medical licenses permanently.

They are the professional that should have laughed the cops out of the hospital.

> The best outcome in my mind here is that the doctors lose their medical licenses permanently.

The best outcome, I would think, includes a number of people spending several years in federal prison for deprivation of rights under color of law (18 USC Sec. 242) [1], as well as any licensed professionals involved losing the relevant professional licenses.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242

Good luck ever finding a federal prosecutor who gives a crap about this rather than spending time making their bones on drug cases ...

Well, yes, "best" and "most likely" are two different things.

Of course, if punishing people for violating people's rights was something people were willing to actually hold politicians accountable for as much or more than punishing drug dealers, then US Attorneys -- always political appointees and usually also politicians -- would be much more concerned about it.

Accept-and-mutter-darkly just preserves the status quo.

"Accept-and-mutter-darkly just preserves the status quo."

I don't accept and mutter darkly, i just think the majority of the populace in the US is happy "as long as it doesn't happen to them", so i'm not sure much will change?

The ironic thing is the whole expedition was to produce evidence for a criminal trial, so unless stuff gets "lost" everything will be well documented. If things do get lost, people pretty much need to hang.

I would like to say that I'd be surprised if any court would find that the right not to be cavity searched without probable cause was not clearly established, but nothing surprises me any more.

Who knows what they'll find to be good faith these days. It's pretty sad at times.

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