Prison Visitor Subjected to Cavity Search Reaches $5.6 Million Settlement

A California woman will receive $5.6 million under a settlement agreement after she sued a prison system, hospital, and multiple individuals for allegedly conducting an unlawful strip search.

In September 2019, Christina Cardenas attempted to see her husband, Carlos Eugene Cardenas, at a California Correctional Institution (CCI) facility for a scheduled family visit. Prison officials, acting on a search warrant, required Cardenas to submit to a variety of searches and examinations, which ultimately culminated in a cavity search, even after an X-ray and scan showed there was nothing hidden in her body, The New York Times reported.

Prison officials had a warrant to search anyone planning to visit Carlos Cardenas, who was convicted of armed robbery and has been in prison since 2001, since they believed visitors would potentially deliver paraphernalia. The warrant limited the scope of a potential search without the subject’s consent (which Cardenas did not grant, the suit alleges), explaining that a body cavity search could only be conducted after an X-ray examination confirmed the presence of a foreign object likely to be contraband hidden in the individual’s body, according to the complaint. (Christina Cardenas v. Gabriel Adame, Officer Rodriguez, Dr. I-wen Tseng, Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, California Correctional Institution, State of California, and Does 1-50)

“They acted in violation of the limited terms of the search warrant,” said Cardenas’s lawyer, Gloria Allred. “The search authorized an X-ray. But if no contraband was found, nothing more could be done in terms of the search of her. They then proceeded to ignore or violate the search warrant.”

The complaint alleged that corrections officers strip-searched Cardenas and required her to squat over a mirror on the ground to enable officers to visually examine her genitalia. The complaint also claimed that Cardenas was not permitted to use the restroom after the strip search. She was then allegedly placed in handcuffs, questioned, and transported to a nearby hospital—Adventist Health—where she said she was forced to take a drug test and a pregnancy test and submit to a forceful cavity search by a male doctor, against her protests. She was also sent bills from the hospital for more than $5,000 to cover the costs of her examinations there, the lawsuit said.

At the end of the day, Cardenas was not allowed to visit her husband.

She endured a traumatic cavity search when visiting a California prison. Now she won a $5.6-million settlement https://t.co/Wz4sIZKewU

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 10, 2024

The complaint pursued multiple avenues of action, including false imprisonment, sexual battery, gender violence, sexual harassment, civil rights violations, and negligence.

Under the settlement agreement, all defendants denied any wrongdoing. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will pay $3.6 million, and the remainder of the $5.6 million will be paid by the other defendants, including Adventist Health.

The settlement also requires the department to distribute materials to employees to ensure prison visitors receive copies of search warrants and that the limits of those warrants are not violated, the Times reported. Non-English speakers must receive information about the warrants in their own language.

The initial filing sought an injunction to stop the practice of body cavity searches of women visitors entirely, but that was not part of the settlement agreement, the Los Angeles Times reported.