PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- When police in a small Pennsylvania coal town went to the home of a suspected methamphetamine dealer, they sent for a female meter maid to search the suspect's wife and 10-year-old daughter.
The woman took the two to an upstairs bathroom, had them lift their shirts and drop their pants and patted them down. Then she directed them downstairs, where they sat on a couch while a Schuylkill County drug squad searched the home.
Six years later, interest groups on both sides of the high-stakes fight over Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito are spinning the ''strip search'' case to their own ends.
As a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, Alito found it acceptable to search family members even if they were not specifically named in the warrant. But his view came in a dissent to the 2-1 majority opinion written by colleague Michael Chertoff -- then a judge, now the nation's Homeland Security secretary -- who said that officers went beyond the terms of the search warrant and were liable for potential damages.
''I share the majority's visceral dislike of the intrusive search of John Doe's young daughter, but it is a sad fact that drug dealers sometimes use children to carry out their business and to avoid prosecution,'' Alito wrote in his March 2004 dissent.Chertoff -- not known for being soft on crime -- argued that the police offered no such probable cause in the application supporting the warrant. The affidavit sought permission to search ''occupants'' of the house, especially visitors who may have been hiding drugs, but did not refer to family members.
''We look in vain for any assertion that narcotics dealers often hide drugs on family members and young children. Perhaps they do; but the judge reviewing this affidavit would not know it,'' Chertoff wrote.
The suspect whose name was listed on the warrant, Michael McGinley, a disbarred lawyer with a spate of drug and assault arrests, said he has since settled the suit with police and Ashland borough for a six-figure sum. Alito's nomination disturbs him.
''What he's advocating, it boggles the mind. That a 10-year-old not named in a warrant can be strip-searched in her own home, with no probable cause? That's just mind-boggling,'' McGinley, 55, said in an interview Wednesday.
His lawyer agreed.
''I took the case because I thought what the police had done in this particular incident was outrageous,'' attorney Andrew Solomon of Philadelphia said. ''Anytime police officers are contemplating a search of a 10-year-old child, I thought that alarm bells ought to be going off in their heads.''
Hmmm. Troublesome.
I'm a liberal and a "card carrying," dues paying member of the ACLU. Yet I have a hard time getting worked up over Judge Alito's nomination.
Granted, he is a conservative, and a Catholic, and almost certainly anti-abortion. He would not have been my choice.
But what can we expect? For the past two terms, we have had a Republican administration, a Republican senate, a Republican house and (arguably) a Republican judiciary. Cringe though you might, Bush has been elected twice, and it is his prerogative to nominate the person of his choice to serve on the Supreme Court. Did anyone really expect him to nominate a pro-choice, pro-marijuana, birkenstock wearing Deadhead?
If I were a Democratic member of the senate, I might be loathe to go on record voting to confirm Judge Alito to the Supreme Court. But at the same time, it would be difficult to make the case that he is not qualified for the job, or that there is anything else (other than that I disagree with some of his positions) to disqualify him from it.
I would tend to agree with Judge Alito in the above case that the warrant authorized searches of "occupants" of the home; that the 10 year old girl was an "occupant," and that at least the cops got a female officer to do it.
On the other hand, I agree with Judge Chertoff that there was no cognizable evidence before the court to establish that drug dealers hide evidence under the clothes of resident children, and thus no probable cause.
What do you think?