FAYETTEVILLE — A federal judge on Wednesday approved the settlement in a class-action lawsuit over strip and body cavity searches of misdemeanor detainees that resulted in the Siloam Springs city jail being shut down.
The joint motion for settlement, approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Erin Setser, calls for class members and their attorney, Doug Norwood, to split a $1.8 million common fund and for the city to close the jail.
Class Representative Nancy Zamarron, the first plaintiff in the case, will receive $20,000 and the rest of the 14 class representatives will receive $10,000. All members of the class who are not class representatives will receive $650 each.
“That’s the end of the story,” Norwood said Wednesday. “They haven’t been stripsearching people for about a year-and-a-half now, so we’ve prevented probably thousands of other people from being strip-searched.”
The suit, filed July 23, 2008, contended people who were arrested or detained for minor offenses not involving drugs, weapons or other contraband were regularly subjected to illegal searches at the city jail since at least July 2005. The statute of limitations had run out on any claims prior to thattime.
Federal courts have ruled that a blanket policy of strip searches or body cavity searches on everyone arrested and brought to jail is unconstitutional. Blanket strip searches are legal only for people already found guilty of a crime, such as prison inmates being searched for security reasons.
Norwood will receive onethird of the common fund, $600,000, plus $6,054 in expenses.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 07/23/2010