Fourth Circuit Affirms Qualified Immunity in Strip Searches Resulting from Anonymous Tips
by David Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a grant of summary judgment in a prisoner’s civil rights action alleging strip searches he was subjected to had infringed upon his constitutional rights. The Court held that it was not clearly established that prison officials could not subject a prisoner to a second, redundant strip search based upon the anonymous tips of other prisoners.
Between May and June 2023, thirteen prisoners at Virginia’s Keen Mountain Correctional Institution (Keen) suffered near fatal opioid overdoses. Anonymous tips from prisoners led prison officials to believe prisoners were smuggling drugs in from the non-contact video visitation room. As a result, Warden Israel Hamilton implemented a policy that required any prisoner entering or exiting the video visitation room be strip searched.
In accord with the policy, prisoner Marcus Ingram was strip searched 26 times in a single month. Ingram filed a 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 complaint alleging the searches lacked justification and ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Hamilton and Sgt. Christopher Squire, who conducted the searches, were named as defendants.
The defendants sought qualified immunity in a summary judgment motion. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia granted the motion. Ingram appealed.
The Fourth Circuit began its opinion by noting that prisoners had to be placed on a call out to attend video visits in Keen’s “Picket Control.” Prisoners were then escorted from their housing area to a search room, subjected to a strip search, escorted to a locked room, and upon conclusion of the video visit the process was reversed. Guards searched each video visit room after the visit. During the 90 days the policy was in place, no contraband was found on prisoners nor in the rooms.
The Court noted that precedent holds that prisoners retain a Fourth Amendment right to limited privacy in their bodies. Strip searches are a sexually invasive act that “constitutes an extreme intrusion on personal privacy, as well as an offense to the dignity of the individual.” See: Johnson v. Robinette, 109 F.4th 99 (4th Cir. 2024). The Court applied the four-prong test in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979) to determine whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred.
The scope of the intrusion weighed heavily in Ingram’s favor. The manner of the search and location factors weighed in defendants’ favor, for the touching or cavity search and the strip search were conducted by a guard of the same gender in a private room.
The justification for the search was deemed incredible. While the Court was mindful of the problem that inspired the policy, it noted there was little reason to credit the “intel” of the anonymous tips. No evidence linked drug smuggling to the video visitation rooms. Additionally, pre-policy robust security procedures severally limited access to those rooms. The Court assumed, without deciding, that the “challenged policy was unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional.”
Next, the Court had to decide whether the right was clearly established. No Supreme Court of the United States or Fourth Circuit precedents foreclosed the policy at issue. Additionally, the Court found a consensus of its sister courts did not exist on the issue. Therefore, the district court’s order was affirmed. See: Ingram v. Hamilton, 179 F.4th 251 (4th Cir. 2026).
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