Aleya Medina

5/15/15
Periods 3 & 4
IRAC
Safford Unified School District vs. April Redding
This school prohibits the possession and use of any drugs including but not limited to
prescription and over the counter. The daughter of April Redding, Savana, is accused of
possessing and selling drugs to students and was later subjected to an at school search and
seizure case.. This information came across the principal and the assistant principal when a
student told them that certain students were bringing drugs and weapons on campus (page 1,
paragraph 1). When Marissa was pulled into the office, she was asked for her possessions to be
searched and consent was given. A razor blade and several pills were found in her belongings.
One pill was unlike the others and she was briefly questioned about where she received it, in
which she replied Savana Redding. To the administrators, Savana and her friends were known as
a rowdy group due to an occurrence at the schools dance a few months prior. There were
cigarettes and alcohol found in the girls bathroom and the same student that came to the
assistant principal about the students selling drugs stated that he attended a party at Savanas
house where alcohol was served before the dance. Due to this suspicion, they pulled Savana into
the office for questioning. There she denied knowledge of the daily planners contents and all of
the suspicions. She then consented to a search of her belongings. They found nothing in her
backpack and continued searching. The school nurse along with the assistant principal then
asked Savana to remove her jacket, socks, and shoes, leaving her in stretch pants and a T-shirt
(both without pockets), which she was then asked to remove. Finally, Savana was told to pull her
bra out and to the side and shake it, and pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her
breasts and pelvic area to some degree (page 3, paragraph 1). The question the court must answer
is, Did the school officials search of Savana Reddings person violate her 4th Amendment
right?
When deciding whether this was a reasonable search of 13 year old Savana Reddings person, we
can look at the previous case of New Jersey v. T.L.O. which was decided in 1985. Determining
the reasonableness of any search involves a twofold inquiry: first, one must consider whether
the...action was justified at its inception; second, one must determine whether the search as
actually conducted was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the
interference in the first place.
With the first rule we see that the action must be justified. It clearly cannot be justified with the
non-direct evidence given. The administrators made suspicions based off of accusations and
rumors. Her bag search was consensual, however she did not give them permission to search her
person. The second rule states that the reasonability of the search greatly depends on the age of
the suspect and the circumstance. Meaning that even if the accusations were true, over the
counter drugs do not cause enough harm to justify a strip search of a 13 year old girl.
The court must conclude with whether or not the search was a violation of Savana Redding's 4th
Amendment rights were violated. The administrators did not find anything in her bag but

continued anyways by telling her to reveal almost every inch of her body. Again, the bag search
was consensual but it did not state anywhere that the full body search was optional to Savana,
nor was it justified by the suspicion. Therefore, we must conclude that the search was indeed a
violation of Savana Redding's rights.