Winston v. Lee

The unanimous decision established a limit to the physical intrusions that criminal defendants must endure.

At around one o'clock in the morning on 18 July 1982, Ralph E. Watkinson was closing the Lombardy Market in Richmond, Virginia, when he was approached by an armed stranger. Watkinson drew his own gun and the stranger told Watkinson to freeze. Watkinson fired his gun and the stranger returned fire; Watkinson was shot in the legs, but he managed to wound the stranger in the left side.

Watkinson's attacker fled from the scene. A short time later, police officers found Rudolph Lee, Jr. approximately eight blocks from the shooting. Lee, who was suffering from a chest wound to this left chest area, told the police that he had been the victim of an attempted robbery. Officers escorted Lee to a hospital emergency room where Watkinson was receiving treatment for his leg wounds. When he saw Lee, Watkinson pointed and stated "that's the man that shot me." Upon further investigation, the officers arrested Lee and charged him with attempted robbery, malicious wounding, and two counts of using a firearm during a felony.

Before trial, the Commonwealth of Virginia asked the court for permission to extract the bullet that was lodged in Lee's left chest area. The Commonwealth initially represented that the bullet was lodged under the left collarbone, that such a surgery would require general anesthesia, and that there were minor chances of nerve damage or death. Later the Commonwealth produced testimony from an expert who stated that the bullet was located just beneath the skin, and that a surgery to remove it would require only local anesthesia. On the basis of this testimony, the court ordered Lee to submit to surgery. Seeking to avoid the surgery, Lee petitioned the Virginia Supreme Court, but the court denied the petitions. Lee then brought the case to federal court, but the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia rejected Lee's pleas.

On 18 October 1982, as Lee was being prepared for surgery, the surgeon discovered through X-rays that the bullet was in fact approximately one inch deep into Lee's muscle, and that the surgery would require general anesthesia. Another hearing followed, but the trial court refused to change its decision. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed that decision, and Lee went back to federal court, still trying to avoid the surgery. After hearing all the evidence, the federal court put a stop to the surgery. The Commonwealth appealed, and a divided Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. The Commonwealth turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear arguments on the issue.

A unanimous High Court held for Lee, affirming the federal appeals court. In a majority opinion written by Justice Brennan, the Court held that the Fourth Amendment, with its prohibition of unreasonable searches, forbid the surgery on Lee. The Court began its analysis by citing the proposition that the Fourth Amendment protects a person's legitimate expectations of privacy and, as the Court said in Olmstead v. United States (1928), "the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." At the same time, the Court acknowledged, persons must give up some measure of privacy and submit to searches that are supported by probable cause to believe that the search will turn up evidence of a crime. Such searches are reasonable and "advance the community's vital interests in law enforcement."

Lee's case, the Court continued, was different from the ordinary search and seizure case. The surgery proposed "implicate[d] expectations of privacy and security of such magnitude that the intrusion may be `unreasonable' even if likely to produce evidence of a crime." In examining case precedent, the Court cited Schmerber v. California (1966), the Court's first case dealing with the state's intrusion into the human body. In Schmerber, the Court had held that police may draw blood from a suspected drunk driver. Although the Schmerber Court held in favor of the state's police interests, the analysis provided in that precedent-setting case provided a framework that, in the Court's opinion, called for a different result in Lee's case.

The Schmerber Court noted the general rule that police must have probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime will be found in a search before conducting the search. Schmerber established additional factors for courts to consider on occasions when police seek to surgically intrude into a person's body. One consideration is whether the procedure would threaten the safety or health of the person. Another factor established by Schmerber was "the extent of intrusion upon the individual's dignitary interests in personal privacy and bodily integrity." These things had to be weighed against the community's interest in criminal law enforcement and the ability of police to use other evidence. Thus, Schmerber fashioned a balancing test that courts were to apply on a case-by-case basis. In Lee's case, the Court opined, the balance weighed in favor of Lee.

The Court noted that the two sides differed in their opinions over the risks the surgery posed to Lee's health and safety. Considering the medical testimony, the Court concluded that the federal appeals court was right in determining that the surgery would be an "`extensive'" intrusion on Lee's privacy and bodily integrity. Such a surgery, requiring general anesthesia, would not be intrusive if performed on a consenting person. However, in Lee's case, the Commonwealth sought to "take control of [Lee's] body, to `drug this citizen--not yet convicted of a criminal offense--with narcotics and barbiturates into a state of unconsciousness'" in order to search beneath the skin for evidence of a crime.

Furthermore, in the Court's opinion, the Commonwealth and its police had little need to intrude in such a way on Lee's body. The Commonwealth had plenty of evidence establishing that Lee was the man who accosted Watkinson, and no one had suggested that Watkinson's identification of Lee in the hospital emergency room would be inadmissible at Lee's trial. In weighing all the relevant factors, the Court determined that the Commonwealth had "failed to demonstrate that it would be `reasonable' under the terms of the Fourth Amendment" to gain the bullet evidence through forced surgery.

Justices Blackmun, Rehnquist, and Burger concurred in the judgment, but only Justice Burger filed an opinion. In an attempt to avoid a misunderstanding about the Court's opinion, Burger declared that the holding in Lee's case should not prevent the "detention of an individual if there are reasonable grounds to believe that natural bodily functions will disclose the presence of contraband materials secreted internally."