If police in Manassas, Virginia have their way, a 17-year-old boy facing charges for sexting with his 15-year-old girlfriend could be forced to have an erection in order to comply with a search warrant.
Back in January, the girl sent explicit pictures of herself to her boyfriend, who replied with a racy video of himself. The girl’s mother complained to police, who arrested the teen for manufacturing and distributing child pornography. If convicted, he could be sent to prison until he is 21 years old and could be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. As heavy-handed as this is, what police are doing as part of their investigation is equally ghastly.
The teen’s attorney, Jessica Foster, says that when the case initially went to trial last Tuesday, Prince William County prosecutors told her that unless her client pleaded guilty, police would obtain a search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis” in order to compare them to the pictures on the teen’s iPhone. According to Foster, police wanted to take her client to the hospital and inject him with something that would induce an erection. He pleaded not guilty, and true to their word, police sought and obtained a search warrant. The two sides were back in court on Thursday, and Foster obtained a motion to let her client visit family out of state. Prosecutors wanted juvenile judge Lisa Baird to force the teen to comply with the search warrant beforehand, but Baird refused to do so.
In a colossal understatement, Foster says that forcing her client to have a forced erection in front of several cops would be “traumatizing.” While she was highly critical of prosecutors for slapping felony charges on a teen “who goes to school every day, plays football, has never been in trouble with the law before,” she’s more than willing to try the case. However, she thinks getting pictures of her client’s penis would serve no real purpose and is focusing her efforts on getting the search warrant quashed. The teen’s guardian ad litem, Carlos Flores, thinks what the police are doing not only amounts to “child abuse,” but is also a waste of money and time. Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert claims that “these allegations lack credibility,” but is looking into the matter further.
Think Progress spoke with University of Pennsylvania law professor and civil rights lawyer David Rudovsky, who thinks what the police are trying to do is outrageously illegal. Rudovsky, an expert on evidence and criminal procedure, thinks that any evidential value in those pictures would be substantially outweighed by the violation of the teen’s personal dignity. He believes the facts in this case are very similar to those in Winston v. Lee, a 1985 Supreme Court decision which held that forcible surgical intrusion into a suspect’s body to obtain evidence would violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also noted the irony that police are effectively creating child porn in order to prosecute someone for creating child porn.
The case is due to go back to trial next Tuesday. Unless Manassas police have a good explanation for how any evidential value would not outweigh the emotional trauma of having a forced erection, they need to not only withdraw that warrant, but apologize to the teen and his family. Otherwise, from where I’m sitting this is a civil-rights lawsuit waiting to happen.
Let us know what you think at the Liberal America Facebook page.
Darrell Lucus is a radical lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
Edited by D.H.
