[lbo-talk] Anally probed by doctors on police orders after routine traffic stop

knowknot at mindspring.com knowknot at mindspring.com
Wed Nov 6 13:19:20 PST 2013


On 11/6/2013, Gar Lipow wrote:


> Anally probed by doctors on police orders after routine traffic stop.
> I'm no lawyer, but involuntary medically unnecessary colonoscopies,
> and multiple anal finger probes sound like they might fit the legal
> definition of rape. Maybe Andie wants to comment on that, since he
> he is actually familiar with criminal law.
>
> http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3209305.shtml?cat=500#!prettyPhoto

If the guy will have a remedy, it will be a civil law not a criminal law one. Re. which you apparently did not look fully at the information made available at the URL you provided -- in particular, at the full text of the unconstitutionally and otherwise wrongfully searched, arrested, then further abused victim's complaint in his federal court lawsuit seeking a substantial damage award.

With one exception, which, however, presumably will benefit the plaintiff, and one additional qualification, this is a classic police brutality case. The exception is of course that, unlike most victims of abusive and too often racially or ethnically or ageist related traffic stops and searches, Mr. Eckert is represented by apparently knowledgeable and otherwise capable attorneys who evidently were the sources for the television, print, and electronic media reporting of their client's story. If possibly less unusual than one might think, the qualification is the egregious role of the hospital and doctors which/who aggravated what the police did which makes the case somewhat unusual.

But speculating whether what the police and doctors did might fit the legal definition of rape (a/k/a, "sexual penetration" in New Mexico) is a moot variation of musing about the introduction to Philosophy 101 old saw whether a tree that falls in the forest far from the hearing of all aurally sentient beings makes a "noise": OTOH, an important element of plaintiff's attempted case is the allegation, which appears to be true, that the local D.A. endorsed then facilitated what they and the doctors did so that it is correlatively obvious that he would not prosecute any of them for any crime relating to the plaintiff and, OTOH, the authority to investigate and decide whether to prosecute for that and for all other crimes is relegated exclusively to the essentially not reviewable discretion of the relevant prosecutor.



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