$5.6 Million Settlement for California Prisoner’s Wife Strip-searched During Visit
On September 5, 2024, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) gave the last signoff to a $5.6 million settlement with the wife of a state prisoner who was forced to strip and submit to an invasive body cavity search when she went to visit him.
When Christina Cardenas, then-40, set out on a four-hour drive in September 2019 to the California Correctional Institution (CCI) for a visit with her incarcerated husband, Carlos, she had no inkling of the ordeal she was about face. Prisoners’ visitors become accustomed to pat-down searches and metal detectors, but Cardenas faced a gauntlet of far more invasive procedures at CCI, a “Supermax” prison housing around 1,700 men,
At the prison, she was “made to strip and squat over a mirror,” recalled the complaint she later filed. When that turned up no contraband, Cardenas was handcuffed and taken to a nearby hospital, where she was required to take a drug test, a pregnancy test, and subjected to forceful penetration of her vagina and anus by a male physician.
“I was very clear and vocal when they told me that they were going to do the search, that I was not OK with a male probing my body,” said Cardenas in an interview.
That protest went ignored. To add insult to injury, the hospital sent her a bill for $5,000.
Celebrated women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred, who has represented women accusing Bill Cosby and R. Kelly of sexual abuse, heard about Cardenas and “just immediately wanted to help her,” she said. In 2020, Allred filed suit on her behalf in Kern County Superior Court, alleging the search was unlawful.
Prior to the ordeal, CDCR officials had obtained a warrant to search anyone who visited Carlos Cardenas. “They were under the impression that Carlos would be receiving some paraphernalia via a visit,” his wife said. But guards’ preparation for that possibility was ham-handed at best. According to court documents, their warrant contained no identifying number. That’s because it was a general warrant for any visitor, so it legally could not be executed unless served with a statement of probable cause for doing so—a statement Cardenas never received. Then, as soon as she was removed to a room for the search to be conducted, she was technically in custody and owed a warning of her civil rights, as required since Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)—but Cardenas never got that warning, either.
Moreover, the warrant stipulated that a strip search could be performed only if an X-ray detected foreign objects inside the visitor’s body. However, Cardenas was not put through X-ray imaging until after she was strip-searched, and even then the scan turned up no evidence of contraband inside her body, according to Allred. Still the wife was not permitted to visit her husband that day.
Instead, Defendant guard Gabriel Adame baselessly alleged that her vehicle—which was also searched—“smelled like weed.” He further demanded to know why she had a medical marijuana card, apparently misunderstanding the membership card she carried for the Okleveaha Native American Church, which “state[d] that she may carry medicinal sacrament for traditional Native American ceremonies,” the complaint recalled. Adame earned $228,508 in 2022.
“They acted in violation of the limited terms of the search warrant,” said Allred. “The search authorized an X-ray. But if no contraband was found, nothing more could be done in terms of the search of her. Then they proceeded to ignore or violate the search warrant.” Allred called the manner in which the search was carried out a “sexual violation.”
Defendants in the suit—CDCR and two of its guards, as well as Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley and its Dr. I-Weng Tseng—reached their settlement with Cardenas, for which the CDRC paid $3.6 million; the remaining $2 million was paid by the hospital and doctor. The agreement also obligated the CDCR to distribute training materials to prison staff to ensure that the limits of search warrants are not violated and that visitors receive copies of search warrants. It also required that non-English speakers receive information about the search warrant in their own language.
“It’s actually broader than we were even seeking at first because it covers all visitors, not just spousal visitors,” said Allred, whose fees and costs were included in the settlement payout. See: Cardenas v. Adame, Cal. Super. (Cty. of Kern), Case No. BCV-20-101420. After the settlement, Cardenas expressed hope that it would remind other visitors that they do not have to “endure abuse” to visit a prisoner.
Additional sources: New York Times, OpenGovPay
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Related legal case
Cardenas v. Adame
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | Cal. Super. (Cty. of Kern), Case No. BCV- 20-101420 |
| Level | State Trial Court |