Interestingly, the Second Circuit, which includes New York, has held that a media-staged "perp walk" violates the 4th Amendment, but the holding would seem to not apply to this case:
"May the police constitutionally force an arrested person to undergo a staged “perp walk” for the benefit of the press, when the walk serves no other law enforcement purpose? We hold that such a staged perp walk exacerbates the seizure of the arrestee unreasonably and therefore violates the Fourth Amendment . . ."
"Perp walks come in several varieties. See generally Blaine Harden, Parading of Suspects is Evolving Tradition, N.Y. Times, Feb. 27, 1999, at B1 (discussing the history of the perp walk in New York City). Commonly, the arrestee is filmed while in the normal course of being transferred by the police from one location to another. In such cases, the police may or may not notify the press that the arrestee will be moved, and is thus available for photographing, at a particular time. See id. These walks are very different from staged perp walks. In a staged walk, the police take the suspect outside the station house, at the request of the press, for no reason other than to allow him to be photographed. The perp walk to which the plaintiff here was subjected was of this sort."
"It is important, however, to understand the limitations of our holding. First, we do not hold that all, or even most, perp walks are violations of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, we are not talking about cases in which there is a legitimate law enforcement justification for transporting a suspect. Accordingly, we do not address the case-seemingly much more common than the kind of staged perp walk that occurred here-where a suspect is photographed in the normal course of being moved from one place to another by the police. Nor do we reach the question of whether, in those circumstances, it would be proper for the police to notify the media ahead of time that a suspect is to be transported . . ."
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1297682.html
On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Wendy Lyon <wendy.lyon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18 May 2011 10:47, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/18/2011 4:13 AM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> >
> >> It was brought into sharp focus Tuesday when French broadcast
> authorities
> >> warned news organizations that images of suspects in handcuffs, not
> unusual
> >> with noncelebrity suspects, contravened the law regarding the "dignity"
> of
> >> detainees.
> >
> > If a police post ever tried to arrange a perp walk in France -- an
> unknown
> > phenomenon there -- someone would be fired. And if papers ran the photo,
> > they would be fined. The scare quotes around "dignity" speak volumes.
>
> By way of comparison, here's a letter about it in today's Irish Times:
>
> Madam, – It is hard to know which of the following was the least
> surprising. That the head of an organisation that has imposed punitive
> sanctions on the Irish economy was staying in a hotel suite costing
> over $3,000 a night. That he considered himself a socialist. Or that
> as a French politician he was accused of a sexual scandal.
>
> In contrast, what was surprising was to see how the US authorities
> treated a powerful man as the equal of the man in the street by
> removing Dominique Strauss-Kahn to jail in handcuffs. I guess that’s
> what they do in a genuine republic. – Yours, etc,
>
> KEVIN O’SULLIVAN,
> Ballyraine Park,
> Letterkenny, Co Donegal.
>
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>