Grudge Against Deputies Won’t Go Away

Kelly Martinez, 24, a mother of a 3-year-old girl, was strip-searched when she visited her husband in the County Jail at Descanso two years ago.

It was an experience she is not about to forgive or forget. And she is not about to give up, even if her battle against the San Diego County’s Sheriff’s Department lasts years--which it probably will.

Halfway through a three-hour visit, deputies approached the young couple sitting at a picnic table and escorted them to separate rooms. There, a female deputy told Kelly Martinez to take off her clothes because jail officials believed she was carrying dope, intending to pass it to her husband, Johnny Martinez. Once Kelly Martinez was naked, the deputy asked her to remove her tampon so it could be examined. No drugs were found.

“It was totally embarrassing. It was the worst,” said Kelly Martinez, a Rancho Pensaquitos resident. “I was crying the whole time, asking, ‘Please, don’t do this to me.’ ”

Martinez was given the choice, she said, of going through the strip search in Descanso or being arrested and taken to the Las Colinas Jail in Santee, which houses women prisoners, to be searched. She was never offered the possibility of cutting short her visit and leaving the jail, she and her attorney said.

Today, Martinez’s case against the county has gotten snared in a legal mire. Alleging that her civil rights were violated, she is suing the county as well as Lt. Elizabeth Foster, whose most recent assignment was being in charge of public relations for the sheriff’s office. At the time of the incident, Foster was working a shift at the Descanso jail and supervised the deputy who strip-searched Martinez.

Foster, now on medical leave from the department, was unavailable for comment. Her attorney, Don M. Hill, deputy county counsel, said Foster’s actions in authorizing the strip search were reasonable because deputies had heard from a reliable informant and because the couple’s actions were suspicious.

After learning that an informant said Kelly Martinez was smuggling drugs into the jail, Foster ordered that deputies watch the couple during their visit, Hill said.

Foster “got a report back from the deputy that there was apparently suspicious conduct, that something was passed between the two, and Kelly Martinez appeared to be nervous,” Hill said.

“I can understand her being upset with being searched,” Hill said. “It’s whether the search violated her constitutional rights--the judge believed it did, we obviously disagree.”

This summer, in a court hearing to determine whether the case could go to trial, Judge Edward J. Schwartz in U.S. District Court, said the strip search was “unlawful” and unjustified.

“I don’t think there was any reasonable suspicion based on any articulated facts that would justify such a visual cavity search,” Schwartz said. “In my view, it was a clearly unlawful search.”

Last month, the attorney for Foster and the county filed an appeal--a move that will probably delay the case for at least a year, Martinez’ lawyer said.

“It’s fairly obvious that this was an unlawful act,” said attorney Michael R. Marrinan. “Instead of costing the county more money by appealing, they should admit that what happened to this young woman was wrong. They just will never admit they did anything wrong; even if it’s staring them in the face.”

But Capt. Lewis Jones, facility commander of the Descanso jail, said the deputies were justified in their actions and had acted appropriately.

After receiving word from a jailed informant that Kelly Martinez was toting drugs to relay to her husband, deputies decided to search the woman. The informant had given deputies information that had led to three arrests before this incident, Jones said.

“He was reliable. We had reasonable, reliable information. This wasn’t something we did on folly,” said Jones, who acknowledged that the incident “got to be a big fiasco.”

In Jones’ mind, there is still some question as to whether Martinez tried to smuggle in drugs. “I think she somehow got rid of it before we did the search. I am not sure she didn’t have it--we just didn’t find it,” Jones said.

At the Descanso jail, visitors are searched no more than twice a year, Jones said. Half of those searches yield drugs; the others turn up nothing, he said. Once a woman was searched, and deputies found that she was smuggling a homemade tortilla in her bra. The tortilla was returned.

“Our purpose is to keep narcotics from coming in here,” Jones said, “not keeping visitors out.”

But the Martinez family sees it differently. They don’t understand why the deputies would listen to a jailed informant. They don’t see why Kelly Martinez had to suffer through such a humiliating experience.

“Why not approach Kelly in the parking lot and say, ‘You cannot visit today,’ ” said husband Johnny Martinez, a construction worker who had been serving a one year sentence for a probation violation that was related to a 1982 burglary offense.

After being strip-searched, Kelly Martinez returned to her home, where she now lives with her husband, their daughter and her parents. Even before she arrived, her mother, Linda Lynch, knew something was wrong. Her daughter, always very punctual, was 45 minutes late. When Kelly Martinez opened the door, she was white and crying. Lynch thought she had wrecked the car.

But, when she heard what happened at the jail, Lynch was enraged.

“My children have never been abused by me, and I will be damned if somebody else is going to,” said Lynch, a transcription clerk. “I felt very hurt. To think that someone would do this to my daughter. She didn’t even do something. . . . Who do these people think they are?”

For Lynch, as well as her daughter, the experience shattered their notion of law enforcement officers. And now, Lynch, still steamed that the incident ever happened, is also furious at the pace with which the case is proceeding through the courts.

“They are just dragging this on and on,” she said.

But she and the rest of the family are determined to keep fighting.

“Just because you have a badge on your chest doesn’t mean you have the right to do anything,” Kelly Martinez said. “I would never wish that (experience) on anybody--not even my worst enemy. . . . A ‘sorry’ isn’t going to cut it.

“You embarrassed me. You took my rights away. You mortified me. I don’t care what it takes, or how long it takes,” she said. “It’s not about money, it’s about principle--what they did was absolutely wrong.”