Nassau may challenge eligibility in strip-search suit

Nassau County may challenge whether 2,000 people were among those unconstitutionally strip-searched at the county jail more than a decade ago, a county attorney said Friday in federal court in Central Islip.

Dennis Saffran, chief of the appeals bureau for the county attorney's office, said jail records show that up to 2,000 people may have been bailed out before being subjected to a blanket strip-search at the jail in the 1990s.

His statement suggested some of the estimated 17,700 people unconstitutionally strip-searched between 1996 and 1999 may not be eligible for a damages award set last month by U.S. District Court Judge Denis Hurley in the class-action lawsuit.

The jail's strip-search policy, aimed at keeping contraband out, ended in 1999 after a judge said it was unconstitutional to force people to expose themselves to guards without cause.

Hurley ordered the county to pay $500 apiece to people who were unconstitutionally strip-searched, on the basis of general loss of human dignity.

Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli has said the county is considering an appeal.

The next phase of the lawsuit - the subject of Friday's hearing before Hurley - is supposed to determine any additional damages to individuals for factors such as pain and suffering and mental anguish.

Plaintiffs' attorney Robert Herbst said he would accept the county's estimate of the number of so-called "book and bail" detainees that the county believes should receive awards. Herbst also proposed that compound interest be added to the $500 awards, but he did not propose an interest rate or suggest how interest would be calculated.

Saffran said interest payments could be "extraordinary." Later outside court, he added, "It would seem to distort the intent of the judge's ruling if the interest is larger than the reward."

Stan Stuart, of Seaford, who attended Friday's hearing and said he was among those strip-searched, said the $500 award would barely cover a $450 fee he said he paid when his sister posted $15,000 to bail him out in 1997. "I hope the judge awards $100,000 for this," he said.