Bell v. Wolfish

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Bell v. Wolfish

Argued January 16, 1979
Decided May 14, 1979

Full case name:	Griffin Bell, Attorney General, et al. v. Wolfish, et al.

Citations:	441 U.S. 520; 99 S. Ct. 1861; 60 L. Ed. 2d 447; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 100

Prior history:	Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Holding

The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit strip searches and similar intrusive conduct against persons being held in federal prison while awaiting trial.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens

Case opinions

Majority by: Rehnquist
Joined by: Burger, Stewart, White, Blackmun
Concurrence/dissent by: Powell
Dissent by: Marshall
Dissent by: Stevens
Joined by: Brennan

Laws applied

U.S. Const., amend. IV

Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979)^[1], is a case in which the United States Supreme Court found that it was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment to perform body cavity searches, strip searches, and the like on persons being held in prison pending a criminal trial, in order to reduce contraband and weapons in the prisons.

1 Significance
2 See also
3 Footnotes
4 References

[edit] Significance

This case arose as a challenge to the conditions under which pretrial defendants are confined. The petitioners claimed that in the absence of a conviction, subjecting incarcerated defendants automatically to the same conditions as convicted felons was unconstitutional punishment. The federal district court agreed with this view, holding that defendants could only be deprived of liberty as a matter of "compelling necessity".^[1]