Jacob Sullum in Forbes on the Legality of Exploring Drivers’ Digestive Tracts

How is it
possible that a motorist pulled over for a rolling stop could end
up being forcibly subjected to two X-rays, two digital probes of
his anus, three enemas, and a colonoscopy, none of which discovered
the slightest trace of the drugs that police claim to have thought
he was hiding inside himself? That is the question raised by
a federal lawsuit that received wide
attention last week after it was highlighted by KOB,
the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque. The answer, Jacob Sullum
writes in Forbes, says a lot about the outrageous
indignities we have come to tolerate in the name of the war on
drugs, which has undermined our civil liberties to the point that
what happened to David Eckert after he was stopped in Deming, New
Mexico, seemed perfectly justified to the cops who detained him,
the prosecutor who approved their application for a search warrant,
the judge who granted it, and the doctors who helped execute
it.

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