POKING AROUND WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE CAN BE COSTLY

Police forced hospital doctors to probe suspect's rectum in search of drugs that were not there, then billed him $4,000 for procedure

By Snejana Farberov

Daily Mail
December 20, 2018

Police in Syracuse, New York, last year obtained a search warrant from a local judge to force doctors at a hospital to probe a man's rectum for drugs against his will.

An X-ray performed earlier on the suspect, 42-year-old Torrence Jackson, had indicated that there were no drugs in his body cavity, and the invasive procedure confirmed that.

Since Jackson never consented to the court-ordered scope, the hospital charged him more than $4,000, and when he refused to pay, threatened to send the bill to collections.

Syracuse.com reported, based on police reports, court filings, medical records and interviews, that in October 2017, the city's police department, a judge and St Joseph’s Hospital Health Center's general counsel 'collaborated to sedate' Jackson 'and thread an 8-inch flexible tube into his rectum.'

The incident began unfolding shortly after noon on October 16, when police pulled over Jackson at East Beard Avenue and South State Street for failing to signal a turn in time.

Jackson was well-known to the local police force, owing to his extensive criminal record stretching back to the mid-1990s.

His rap sheet, dating back to his teenage years, includes charges of resisting arrest, drug use, weapons charges and leading police on chases.

During the fateful traffic stop, police officers found a baggie of marijuana on Jackson’s person and the driver's seat fabric tested positive for cocaine.

According to an incident report, an officer wrote that he observed Jackson raise his buttocks off the seat, which is consistent with a suspect concealing drugs in his rectum.

As he was being booked into the county jail, Jackson reportedly made further indications that he had illegal narcotics stashed inside his body - a claim he now denies - and resisted officers' attempts to perform a cavity search.

The situation escalated, and at 2pm, Jackson was taken to St Joseph's Hospital Health Center, where he was sedated after allegedly threatening to kill staff.

Meanwhile, a police officer wrote out a search warrant ordering doctors to probe Jackson's rectum and headed to a judge's home for a signature.

With a signed warrant in hand, the cop arrived at the hospital, but at least two doctors there initially refused to perform the procedure, known as a sigmoidoscopy, pointing out that an X-ray of the patient's abdomen showed that there was nothing in his rectum, and that the patient was refusing all interventions.

Throughout his forced hospital stay, Jackson was uncooperative. He was reportedly combative, refused to ingest a laxative meant to speed up a bowel movement and refused to submit to a standard rectal exam.

Armed with the signed warrant, police told doctors to perform the rectal scope, but Dr William Paolo told them, 'we would not be doing that.'

At that point, the hospital’s general counsel, Lowell Seifter, stepped in. After conferring with the judge who signed the warrant, Seifter told medical staff that the warrant required them to use any means necessary to retrieve the drugs, and the patient had no right to refuse.

Shortly before midnight - nearly 10 hours after Jackson first arrived at the hospital - he was put under and had the 8-inch tube inserted into his rectum. No drugs were ever found inside.

Speaking from jail, where he was on unrelated charges, Jackson told the newspaper that when he woke up, he found blood in his underwear and felt 'tampered with.'

He later got a bill from the hospital for $4,595.12 for the forced sigmoidoscopy, which he refused to pay.

The hospital initially threatened to send the bill to a collection agency, but ultimately let it go.

Jackson's drug charges were later dismissed and he pleaded guilty only to traffic violations.

In August, he was arrested on felony drugs and weapons charges; that case against him is still pending.

St Joseph’s has defended the forced rectum probe, telling the paper that its staff complies with court orders.

This is not the first case of its kind in the US, and previous instances where suspects had invasive procedures performed on them against their will resulted in million-dollar settlements.

In 2016, a hospital in El Paso, Texax, and the federal government paid $1.6million to settle a lawsuit filed by a New Mexico woman who had endured a six-hour invasive cavity search after a US Customs and Border Patrol drug-sniffing dog flagged her.

In 2014, the city of Deming, New Mexico, settled with David Eckertt for the same amount stemming from a battery of probes and medical tests in search for drugs, which turned up nothing.

That same year, the same El Paso hospital as in the 2016 case and the federal government agreed to pay a woman $1.1million stemming from a rectal exam, an x-ray, a vaginal exam, a CT scan and a forced observed bowel movement.