Lowering The Bar, a legal humor site that refused to engage in April Fool's postings because the reality is so weird, has what they call a "comical string cite" in a decision by the puckish Judge Alex Kosinski. He points out that allowing strip searches only in "crimes of violence" is useless as a test, since courts disagree on what a crime of violence is:
[Courts] often disagree. See, e.g., United States v. Chambers, 473 F.3d 724, 726 (7th Cir. 2007) (escape is a crime of violence); United States v. Piccolo, 441 F.3d 1084, 1088 (9th Cir. 2006) (no it’s not); United States v. Asberry, 394 F.3d 712, 715-16 (9th Cir. 2005) (statutory rape is a crime of violence); id. at 722 (Bea, J., concurring) (no way); United States v. Wenner, 351 F.3d 969, 974 (9th Cir. 2003) (burglary is not a crime of violence); id. at 977 (Wallace, J., dissenting) (is too); United States v. Johnson, 448 F.3d 1017, 1018 (8th Cir. 2006) (grand theft auto is); Von Don Nguyen v. Holder, 571 F.3d 524, 525 (6th Cir. 2009) (au contraire); Malta-Espinoza v. Gonzales, 478 F.3d 1080, 1084 (9th Cir. 2007) (stalking isn’t); id. at 1088 (Duffy, J., dissenting) (“I respectfully dissent.”); United States v. Saavedra-Velazquez, 578 F.3d 1103, 1110 (9th Cir. 2009) (Reinhardt, J.) (attempted robbery is); id. (Reinhardt, J., specially concurring) (or is it?); United States v. Trinidad-Aquino, 259 F.3d 1140, 1146 (drunk-driving-resulting-in-bodily-injury is a gentle crime); id. at 1147 (Kozinski, J., dissenting) (Bull!).Strip Searches Lead to Discovery of Comical String Cite, Among Other Things - Lowering the Bar
The last named, United States v. Trinidad-Aquino, is mentioned in Deport Foreign Drunk Drivers!—Amend The Immigration Act!, By Juan Mann, Vdare.com, June 20, 2005. It begins:
The government appeals Miguel Trinidad-Aquino's sentence for illegally re-entering the United States following deportation, a violation of 8 U.S.C. §§ 1326. We are asked to decide whether Trinidad-Aquino should have received a sixteen-level increase in base offense level under Sentencing Guidelines §§ 2L1.2(b)(1)(A) because he was previously deported after conviction for an "aggravated felony." The answer turns on a question of law: does a California conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol with injury to another constitute a "crime of violence" as defined at 18 U.S.C. §§ 16?
For some weird reason, they decide it isn't. And how did I guess that Trinidad-Aquino was an immigration case? Racial profiling. Hispanic-surnamed immigrants commit a large proportion of the drunk driving in the United States.
