Other Search Tactics Rejected : Court Upholds Jail X-Ray of Suspect for Drugs

The tip proved to be on the mark: A young woman wanted by police on a misdemeanor charge would turn herself in to police the very next day, a confidential informant reported in December, 1986.

But the woman’s motives might not be all they appeared. According to the informant, the suspect would bring with her a secret cache of hypodermic needles and drugs that she was trying to smuggle to awaiting friends in Orange County Jail.

Acting on the tip, police secured a warrant to “search the person and body cavities of (the suspect) in a medically approved manner.” Using X-rays, they discovered the drugs and paraphernalia hidden in her vagina.

The suspect, then 31-year-old Jacqueline Kay Brown, maintained that the drug seizure was illegal, in part, because it was an undue intrusion on her privacy. But in a decision handed down Monday, the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana upheld the drug conviction, ruling that police had good reason to conduct the search and that their methods posed “no health hazards.”

But other, more commonplace law enforcement tactics fared less well Monday as the appellate court grappled with the often tricky legal question of how far police can go in their intensified efforts to seize drugs without treading on an individual’s civil liberties.

The appeals court threw out two local drug busts in which it found that officers had violated constitutional safeguards in securing multiple kilograms of drugs.

At the same time, however, the court upheld the seizure of drugs in several other recent drug busts, as well as in the Brown case, highlighting what some critics say is a muddled area of the law.

“Especially in these drug cases, search-and-seizure issues are very hotly litigated with few clear answers, and as a result, the police officers’ jobs in these cases can be very tough and sometimes very confusing,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Janelle B. Davis, a criminal law supervisor in the San Diego office.

Davis reviewed one of the two cases reversed Monday by the appellate court. In it, undercover narcotics agents seized several kilos of cocaine from a Santa Ana hotel room after discussing the sale of the drug with defendant Jose Guillermo Perez.

But the Court of Appeal, in declaring the seizure against Perez illegal, ruled that the agents had acted improperly without first getting a search warrant. The court rejected the attorney general’s argument that the absence of a search warrant was justified by the possible escape of the suspects or the destruction of evidence.

“As a practical matter, this ruling probably means that the defendant will now walk the streets,” Davis said.

In another drug case, the appellate court on Monday threw out the seizure of narcotics, paraphernalia and other items from the San Juan Capistrano home of Darryl Luis Storm as part of a crackdown on a suspected cocaine ring.

The appellate court said that the search warrant in the case was too broad to satisfy the demands of any “reasonably trained officer,” and criticized agents for using the faulty document to confiscate items with no apparent connection to criminal activities.

But while dealing law enforcement officials setbacks in the Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano seizures, the appellate court ruled in the case of the woman who tried to smuggle drugs into the jail that Sheriff’s Department and medical personnel acted reasonably in taking reliable information, initiating a medically safe search of Jacqueline Brown and ensuring that the suspect’s “dignity interests were protected.”

“We obviously had hoped for a different conclusion,” said Brown’s attorney, Sandy A. Wilson. She declined further comment.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Dick Olson said jail deputies repeatedly have had to deal with attempts to smuggle drugs into the jail in recent years. On several occasions, he said, suspects have died after ingesting heroin-filled balloons.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas M. Goethals, who oversees the litigation of search-and-seizure questions for the Orange County district attorney’s office, said Monday’s rulings both for and against law enforcement officials give a glimpse of the unpredictability of an issue in a “state of evolution.”

“It’s very difficult to characterize what (the Court of Appeal) is doing on these drug seizure issues. I see some things that lead me to to think there are practices they don’t like, but other times they go the other way.

“We lawyers spend days and weeks and months arguing about these questions, and we expect the cop on the street to make split decisions on what’s going to be acceptable in court,” Goethals said. “It can make it very difficult for the cop to do his job.”