|
|
 |
|
February 9, 2010 |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| September 08, 2006 |
By: Forrest Norman |
|
young Miramar woman has filed notice that she will sue the city of Aventura and Miami-Dade County claiming she was unlawfully subjected to a search of her body cavities after being arrested for driving her car with an expired license plate.
An attorney for Jessie Thodde sent a notice last month to the city of Aventura, the Aventura Police Department, Miami-Dade County and the Miami-Dade County Department of Corrections that she would be filing suit for negligence and civil rights violations.
Under Florida law, plaintiffs are required to notify counties and municipalities of pending suits in state court, giving them six months to settle or deny liability.
“Most moving violations result in a ticket,” said her attorney, Anthony Scalese of Collier & Scalese in Plantation. “She’s a very attractive young woman who has been violated, and she’s still suffering.”
None of the parties that received the notice responded to interview requests by deadline.
According to Scalese, Thodde, then 22, was on her way to her waitress job at the Cheesecake Factory in the Aventura Mall in August 2003 when she was stopped by Aventura police.
According to police reports, Thodde took too long to stop her car and wouldn’t get out of the vehicle when ordered to do so. Thodde was arrested and taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility. Nothing in the police report suggests she was suspected of hiding contraband.
She was charged with having an expired tag and failing to obey a lawful command, a criminal misdemeanor. After Thodde was taken to the jail, she was subjected to a body cavity search, according to Scalese. She has since suffered from recurring nightmares and headaches, and doctors have diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, Scalese said.
The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office subsequently declined to prosecute Thodde.
“She came to me about a month after her arrest, and she was having a lot of emotional problems as a result of this incident,” Scalese said. “We waited to start the suit until the statute of limitations on her alleged offenses had expired. Still, three years later, she is undergoing emotional trauma.”
Scalese said Thodde would file a claim for injuries and damages resulting from her arrest and search, but declined to be more specific.
The alleged incident occurred during a period in which Miami-Dade County and the Miami-Dade County Corrections Department have admitted in a class-action lawsuit to illegally performing strip searches and body cavity searches on arrestees. Under state law, such searches can only be done with the written permission of a superior officer and only on those arrested for certain offenses.
Last year, the county agreed to pay $6.3 million in a settlement to thousands of people who were illegally strip searched or body-cavity searched between 2000 and 2005. Scalese said he advised Thodde to decline participation in the class-action suit in order to let the statute of limitations run out on the charges filed against her. He was concerned that authorities might revive the charges out of retaliation.
The discovery that the county corrections department was not following state law sprang from a lawsuit filed by anti-free trade demonstrators in the wake of the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas conference in Miami.
Three demonstrators sued the county after being arrested and strip searched. During the discovery phase of the suit, the plaintiff attorneys found that the corrections department had performed blanket strip searches and body cavity searches of female prisoners in violation of state law.
The Miami Police Department proposed earlier this year to remove its rules requiring that body cavity searches only be done by medical personnel. The proposed rule would have allowed such searches to be done by police officers.
The city of Miami and the Miami police abruptly withdrew that proposal last week after the Daily Business Review reported on it and civil libertarians raised objections.
Forrest Norman can be reached at fnorman@alm.com or at (305) 347-6649.
|
Search the archive for more stories.
|
|
|
 |
|
lawjobs Featured Ad
Foreclosure Litigation Attorney Boca Raton office of expanding firm seeks an Experienced Litigator w/ min. 3 yrs. exp. Excellent salary and benefits package.
E-mail scleary@
logs.com |
|
|
|
|
|
|
