WOMAN SUES OVER CAVITY SEARCH

An Izard County woman complained in a federal lawsuit that she was
illegally forced to undergo a body cavity search when sheriff's deputies
searched her house without a warrant on March 4, 1998. Kitty Eaddy filed
the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Little Rock. She seeks
compensatory and punitive damages for what she says were violations of
her civil rights.

Eaddy said she and her boyfriend, Michael Leggett, were asleep in her
house in Oxford about 10 p.m. when her 17-year-old daughter woke her,
saying "the cops" were there looking for Leggett.

Before Eaddy or Leggett could answer the door, the lawsuit alleges,
Izard County Sheriff Donnie Joe Yancey, four male deputies and Leggett's
male parole officer entered the living room with a police dog. The
parole officer announced that Leggett had failed a monthly drug test two
days earlier, and the group was there to retest him, the lawsuit states.
Gary Clayton, the parole officer, took Leggett into the bathroom and
administered a urinalysis test, which the sheriff then said Leggett had
failed, the lawsuit says.

Next, the lawsuit asserts, Yancey and his deputies searched the house
without a search warrant and without Eaddy's consent. Yancey, who is no
longer the sheriff, then summoned his female chief deputy, Willene Bray,
to the house, Eaddy claims.

The lawsuit contends that Bray took Eaddy into the bathroom and ordered
her to strip and bend over. According to the lawsuit, Bray "visually
peered into all of plaintiff's body cavities" and her "digitals
penetrated her vagina." Bray then left the room and told the sheriff
that Eaddy was "clean," the lawsuit states.

Eaddy "was extremely shocked and mentally and emotionally damaged
permanently as a result of this improper and illegal conduct in
examining her body and invasion of privacy," asserts the lawsuit, filed
on Eaddy's behalf by Mountain Home attorney Edward Witt Chandler. The
lawsuit contends that "the degrading practice of human strip-searchers,
visual and physical penetration of body cavities, based upon mere
suspicion, was a policy of Izard County established by the sheriff,
Donnie Joe Yancey, as policy-maker."

Yancey, whose last year as sheriff was 1998, couldn't be reached for
comment. Bray, who now works at Mount Pleasant High School, said she
remembers the events referred to in the lawsuit, but, "I don't recall
all of that." Asked if it was common for her to conduct strip searches,
she replied, "I'm sure it was or I wouldn't have done it."

The county's attorney, Linda Boone, was out of the office Friday and
couldn't be reached for comment.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr.