Federal Judiciary

Byrd v. Maricopa County Sheriff's Dep't (9th Cir. - May 18, 2009)

By Shaun Martin

I never thought those stories were true, but then I met Kathy. We met when she was a young trainee at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Training Academy, and I was in a minimum security jail for some low-level charges. They called a ton of us out to check us for contraband, told us to strip down to our prison-provided boxer shorts, and assigned trainees to search us. I got Kathy.

They told us to raise our hands, spread our legs, and turn away from the trainee, and -- trembling with anticipation -- I did so. Kathy then approached me from behind and ran her smooth hands across my thin boxer shorts. The feeling was indescribable. So many people watching. There was even someone filming us! The decadence. The power. It was wrong, but it was oh so right.

Kathy pulled the waistband of my boxer shorts out a few inches to check me out, but teasingly did not look inside. The feel of her fingers on the inside of my boxers was stunning, but the best was yet to come. She lightly frisked over my boxers and down the outside of my thigh, stopping at the bottom of my shorts. Then, through my boxers, she used light pressure -- with the back of her hand (oh my God, how sexy!) -- to touch my "scrotum and penis". This was new to me. It was new to Kathy. But it was something we would share forever.

But she wasn't done with me. Not by a longshot. She then placed her hand at the bottom of my buttocks, ran it upward over my boxers, and separated my ass cheeks. Bingo! There was nothing there, of course. Nothing in a physical sense, anyway. But, emotionally, that was it for me. I was spent. I'd never had anything like it from a woman before -- either inside or outside of prison -- and it was something I could never forget.

I know you'll say I'm making all this up. That there's no way they'd shoot a prison porn in an actual prison with actual prisoners and actual people like me and Kathy. But you'd be wrong. So very, very wrong.

Sincerely,

Chuck Byrd

P.S. - Sure, I tarted it up a tiny bit in terms of style, but the substance -- indeed, many of the words -- come straight from Judge Ikuta's opinion. Check it out, as well as Judge Fernandez's short dissent, the money line (pardon the pun) of which is: "When all is said and done, I would not think it was reasonable for males to strip search females in this kind of situation, and I do not think it was reasonable to have females strip search males. If our law does approve of it, and the majority opinion cogently reasons that it does, I reluct; the law should
change."

Full post as published by California Appellate Report on May 18, 2009 (boomark / email).