CA4: RS is the standard for a prison visitor strip search

Reasonable suspicion is the standard for a prison visitor strip search, and officers had reasonable suspicion here. Calloway v. Lokey, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1756 (4th Cir. Jan. 21, 2020):

Accordingly, we now make clear that, as the parties agree, the standard under the Fourth Amendment for conducting a strip search of a prison visitor — an exceedingly personal invasion of privacy — is whether prison officials have a reasonable suspicion, based on particularized and individualized information, that such a search will uncover contraband on the visitor’s person on that occasion. See, e.g., Spear v. Sowders, 71 F.3d 626, 630 (6th Cir. 1995); Blackburn v. Snow, 771 F.2d 556, 564-65 (1st Cir. 1985); Thornev. Jones, 765 F.2d 1270, 1276 (5th Cir. 1985); Hunter v. Auger, 672 F.2d 668, 674-75 (8th Cir. 1982). This reasonable suspicion standard has been a familiar part of the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence since Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968), and it requires “a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person” as judged by the totality of facts and circumstances known to the relevant officers at the time, Heien v. NorthCarolina, 574 U.S. 54, 60, 135 S. Ct. 530, 190 L. Ed. 2d 475 (2014); Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S. Ct. 2412, 110 L. Ed. 2d 301 (1990) (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S. Ct. 690, 66 L. Ed. 2d 621 (1981)). Requiring more than a mere “hunch” but less than probable cause, the “standard is not an exacting one” and demands “only ‘a moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing.'” Braun v. Maynard, 652 F.3d 557, 561 (4th Cir. 2011) (quoting Safford Unified Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 371, 129 S. Ct. 2633, 174 L. Ed. 2d 354 (2009)).

In this case, the record demonstrates beyond genuine dispute that Sgt. Lokey and Unit Manager Brown made the decision to seek Calloway’s consent to a strip search based on a sequence of events that, viewed together, culminated in a reasonable suspicion that Calloway was attempting to pass contraband to Talbert during her July 17 visit. First, Lokey knew that, earlier in the year, Talbert had enlisted his mother to help in a conspiracy to smuggle tobacco into a different Virginia prison. Then, sometime after Talbert’s transfer to Augusta, Lokey started to hear from informants that he should keep an eye on “Travis.” And two days prior to Calloway’s visit, Lokey received a more concrete tip from an inmate that “Talbert was moving,” a term that Lokey knew to be prison slang for drug smuggling. All of this information suggested that Talbert might attempt to have an outside visitor sneak contraband into Augusta, as he had attempted to do at Bland. Thus, it was reasonable for Lokey to direct Officer Nelson to keep a particularly close watch on Talbert and any visitor he received that weekend. Then, in the context of this heightened scrutiny, Lokey received a report from Nelson during the course of Calloway’s visit with Talbert that he (Nelson) had observed Calloway adjusting her waistband in a suspicious manner and, indeed, that it looked to him like she had just unbuttoned her pants while in the visitation room. This information was especially meaningful to Lokey in light of his knowledge that “Nelson [had] been very successful in the past [in] identifying suspicious actions [that] [had] led to the interception of drugs or other contraband.”

Reason: Prison Guards Who Forced Menstruating Visitor To Expose Vaginal and Anal Cavities Are Protected by Qualified Immunity by Billy Binion