Strip search ‘outrageous’

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 8

Strip search ‘outrageous’

PA Auckland Two top criminal lawyers yesterday described as outrageous a decision to strip-search a woman barrister before she interviewed witnesses at the Christchurch Central Police Station. An Auckland lawyer, Mrs Lorraine Smith, was searched in May last year before she interviewed two maximum security prisoners who were defence witnesses in the Lumsden bank robbery trial. Christchurch police yesterday dismissed suggestions that the search had been videotaped and that copies of the tape had sur-

faced among the Auckland legal fraternity. The lawyers, Messrs Mike Bungay and Peter Williams, said that the search, was an unacceptable affront to Mrs Smith and to the legal profession. Mr Bungay said that he would not have submitted to such a search even if it was a condition of seeing his witness. “I would go to the judge when the court sat and make a complaint.” Mr Williams, president of the Criminal Bar Association, said that the stripsearch demand was improper. He offered the association’s support if Mrs

Smith wished to lodge a complaint. In 30 years of practice he had never been searched or even had his briefcase examined when visiting maxi-mum-security prisoners. “Prison officers have treated me with the utmost courtesy at all times. The fact that Mrs Smith was strip-searched is an affront to her personal and professional dignity that warrants an investigation,” he said. Mr Williams said the fact that Mrs Smith was searched, whether it was filmed or not, was improper. If a statement about the film made by another

lawyer was a joke, it was in extremely poor taste and was not particularly professional, he said. If it was not a joke, it was reprehensible. “Whichever way you look at it, she was very poorly treated.” The Commissioner of Police, Mr Ken Thompson, is investigating the assertions that the strip-search of Mrs Smith was filmed and copies of the videotape circulated. Mr Alexander King, the Crown solicitor who initially said that he had seen the tape, later withdrew the assertion, saying it was “banter” between counsel.