41. Searches.

U.S. Appeals Court

FRISK SEARCH

Conyers v. Abitz, 416 F.3d 580 (7th Cir. 2005). A state prison inmate brought a [section] 1983 action against prison officials, challenging a search imposed on him when he left a prison chapel. The inmate also claimed that prison officials hindered his observance of a religious fast, violating his right to religious exercise. The district court granted summary judgment for the officials on the ground that the inmate failed to his exhaust his claims. The inmate appealed. The appeals court affirmed in part, and vacated and remanded in part. The court held that any Fourth Amendment privacy interest that the inmate had in not being frisked upon leaving a prison chapel was insufficient to overcome the judicial deference generally afforded to prison officials when they are evaluating what is necessary to preserve institutional order and discipline. The court noted that the officials produced evidence that they had a legitimate security interest in frisking inmates as they left the prison chapel because the chapel was a hotbed of contraband exchanges. The court held that summary judgment was barred by fact issues as to whether prison officials had sufficient reasons to ignore the inmate's request to participate in a religious fast, which was made after an administrative deadline. The court found that the inmate's procedural shortcoming of failing to follow the prison's time deadlines for filing a grievance only amounts to a failure to exhaust administrative remedies, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), if prison administrators specifically relied on that shortcoming. (Illinois)

U.S. Appeals Court

VEHICLE

Neumeyer v. Beard, 421 F.3d 210 (3rd Cir. 2005). Prison visitors filed a [section] 1983 action seeking a declaration that the prison's practice of subjecting visitors' vehicles to random searches violated their constitutional rights. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the defendants and the visitors appealed. The appeals court affirmed, holding that the prison's practice of engaging in suspicionless searches of prison visitors' vehicles was valid under the special needs doctrine. According to the court, the relatively minor inconvenience of the searches, balanced against the prison officials' special need to maintain the security and safety of the prison, rose beyond their general need to enforce the law. The court noted that some inmates have outside work details and may...