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Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions will affect school policies that subject students to invasive searches, and how accused rapists and other violent offenders are prosecuted. In June, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the strip search of an Arizona middle-school student by school officials who thought she might be carrying prescription-strength ibuprofen. Two other U.S. Supreme Court rulings from recent weeks address defendants’ post-conviction rights to DNA testing and defendants’ rights to confrontation when crime laboratory reports are offered as evidence.

Strip Search of Teen Girl Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court ruled last week that the strip search of a 13-year-old girl suspected of violating her school’s drug policy was unconstitutional. Experts expect the 8-to-1 decision to dramatically reduce such searches in school districts across the nation, some of which have already banned the procedure because of its potential to degrade students.

The case, Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, centered around Savana Redding, who in 2003 denied charges that she brought prescription-strength ibuprofen to her middle school in Safford, Arizona. School officials searched Redding’s backpack and outer clothing for the contraband but found nothing. They then escorted her to the school nurse’s office, where she was told to partially remove her bra and underpants, leaving her breasts and pelvic region partially exposed. Nothing was found in the search.

Redding, now 19, was so humiliated that she never returned to the school.

Redding’s mother filed suit against the school district and against the assistant principal who ordered the search, arguing that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. A federal district court ruled in favor of the school district, but the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Redding, as did the Supreme Court in this decision.

“The content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion,” retiring Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. Justice Souter stated that the school officials were within their rights when they searched Redding’s backpack and outer clothing for the pills – simple prescription-strength ibuprofen. But he said they went too far in an “embarrassing, frightening and humiliating” search of Redding’s undergarments.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at present the only female on the Court, had worried earlier that her male colleagues did not appreciate the humiliation and trauma Redding faced. “They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” she told USA Today after the case was argued.

The Court did not rule out strip searches in the cases of more dangerous contraband, or if there is a more specific tip. The Justices also made clear that they were not debating schools’ no-drugs policies. “Unfortunately, the court missed an opportunity to provide clearer guidance to school officials,” General Counsel to the National School Boards Association Francisco Negrón wrote in an oped in USA Today. “While the court did not nullify zero-tolerance policies, it did require schools to determine the dangerousness of a drug before deciding how intrusive to make a search. It did not specify what it meant by dangerousness. How are school officials to gauge that?”

The decision was not a complete victory for Redding. The majority ruled that the case against the assistant principal could not proceed, because the law was unclear about the constitutionality of strip searches at the time Redding was searched. A separate claim against the school district, based on its practices and policies, was not part of the appeal to the Supreme Court and will go forward, the New York Times reports.

Defendants’ Rights in DNA Testing and Lab Reports

In a 5-to-4 decision that the New York Times editorialized was “appalling,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 18 in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing.

At issue is the case of William G. Osborne, serving time in an Alaska prison after a 1994 rape conviction based in part on DNA testing of semen found in a condom at the crime scene. At the time, Osborne’s lawyer declined a more advanced DNA test, fearing that the results could further implicate his client. On appeal, Osborne requested further DNA testing, but Alaskan courts denied his request. A U.S. Court of Appeals later ordered prosecutors to turn over the DNA evidence and said Osborne could pay the cost of further testing. Testing has become more sophisticated and accurate since Osborne’s first trial.

Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that the issue of DNA testing was best handled by states. Four states, Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts and Oklahoma, have no laws in place dealing with post-conviction DNA testing, although an Alabama law allowing post-conviction DNA testing for death row inmates will soon take effect. Justice Samuel Alito concurred with Chief Justice Roberts, writing that allowing Osborne to forgo testing at trial and then request it from prison “would allow prisoners to play games with the criminal justice system.”

In writing for the dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “There is no reason to deny access to the evidence and there are many reasons to provide it.”

The Washington Post editorialized against the ruling and in favor of the dissent: “Access to DNA evidence should not be based on luck of the draw. All states should enact laws guaranteeing ample access to DNA testing to prisoners, especially those facing capital punishment or lengthy sentences. The Constitution’s promise of due process demands no less.”

A week later the U.S. Supreme Court handed down another 5-to-4 decision, this time ruling in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts that crime laboratory reports may only be used against criminal defendants if the laboratory analysts who are responsible for them testify and face cross-examination. This ruling extends the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witness against him.” Opponents warn that the ruling will create a crushing burden on already-overwhelmed crime labs, which process DNA and other evidence from crime scenes.