After a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found for Georgia prison officials in a suit brought by a prison visitor they subjected to a strip-search, the decision was vacated on October 3, 2024; the case was reheard by the full Eleventh Circuit en banc on February 4, 2025, which will issue a ruling later this year. That brought hope for Clarissa Gilmore, the visitor pursuing the appeal. So did a $126,500 payout that the Nevada Department of Corrections (DOC) gave to Sonjia Mack after her suit for a similar gross violation of her privacy won a key ruling from the state Supreme Court.

Gilmore was at Smith State Prison in 2017 making a routine visit to her incarcerated husband. She had visited 50 times before, but this time she noticed guard Lt. Alberta W. Milton staring at her. Gilmore didn’t know why, she said. To reach the visitation room, she had endured a pat-down search by one guard, wanding with a metal-detector by another and passed through an electromagnetic-radiation body scanner. She returned Milton’s stare before resuming her visit.

At that point, Milton and guard Christina Irizarry interrupted the visit and summoned Gilmore to a vacant bathroom. There they extorted her signature on a strip-search approval form, using threats of incarceration and refusing to let her speak to a supervisor. Gilmore was then ordered to strip, after which the guards manipulated her breasts and fingered her rectum and vagina. Finding no contraband, they had her dress again; Irizarry escorted her back to the visitation room and said she was “so sorry.”

Gilmore phoned Dep. Warden Tamarshe Smith two days later to complain, receiving an apology and an admission (though he later denied it) that a review of surveillance video turned up nothing suspicious. Milton later claimed that Smith had authorized the search, but a review of prison logs showed he wasn’t working that day. Guard Sabrini Carlene Lupo later said that her suspicions were raised by the smell of marijuana on Gilmore, raising suspicions of contraband that she passed to Milton and Itizarry. But neither of them mentioned that in their reports from that day.

With so many fuzzy memories, the guards and DOC were sued in federal court for the Southern District of Georgia. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, ­Gilmore claimed that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights with the unreasonable search.

The district court dismissed her claim, finding the guards and Smith were entitled to qualified immunity (QI). Gilmore appealed, but the Eleventh Circuit panel affirmed that judgment on July 29, 2024. The strip search violated Gilmore’s civil rights, the panel agreed. But QI shielded Defendants because her right not to be subjected to a suspicionless strip search was not “clearly established.” Gilmore then filed her petition for an en banc rehearing, which the full court granted on October 3, 2024, vacating the earlier ruling. See: Gilmore v. Ga Dep’t. of Corr., 119 F.4th 839 (11th Cir. 2024).

The case remains pending, and PLN will monitor and update developments. Gilmore is represented by attorneys with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., along with Atlanta attorney Shania King. See: Gilmore v. Ga Dep’t. of Corr., USCA (11th Cir.), Case No. 23-10343.

This is not the first instance in which a prison visitor has been subjected to a demeaning and illegal strip-search. During a 2017 visit to her boyfriend, a prisoner at High Desert State Prison (HDSP) in Nevada, Sonjia Mack also said that she was both strip-searched and detained against her will before prison officials eventually let her go. No contraband was found on her, either; but unlike Gilmore, Mack gave no consent to the search. Worse, her visitation rights were suspended anyway.

Mack filed suit in 2018 in federal court for the District of Nevada, which certified several questions to the state Supreme Court. That court replied in 2022 “that a private right of action for money damages exists to vindicate violations of search-and-seizure rights under the Nevada Constitution”; moreover, “a qualified-immunity defense does not apply to such an action.”

“[T]he Legislature has not provided for a state-law equivalent of qualified immunity in the manner it exists under federal law,” the Court said, pointing to NRS 41.032-0337, which “provides circumstances under which sovereign immunity has been restored.” Absent that waiver, the Court said it was powerless to supply a QI defense under state law. See: Mack v. Williams, 522 P.3d 434 (Nev. 2022).

The DOC then negotiated a settlement with Mack, and the state Board of Examiners approved a $126,500 payout to her on November 14, 2023. Sadly, the state Supreme Court ruling in her case came too late for another HDSP prisoner’s girlfriend strip-searched during a 2017 visit. She also filed suit and took it all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but as PLN reported, the appellate Court affirmed the grant of QI to prison officials in 2020. [See: PLN, Dec. 2021, p.48.]  

Additional source: Nevada Current

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login