No, The Police Can't Force Children To Masturbate For Them -- Even With a Warrant

One of the wilder cases I've ever seen appears to be coming to a close, as the Fourth Circuit -- in a 2-1 decision -- denied qualified immunity to a police officer who sought to compel a minor to masturbate in front of him until he achieved an erection. Yes, you read that right.

The background to the case is here. The plaintiff was a seventeen year old boy who had sent a sext of his erect penis to his fifteen year old girlfriend. Not wise, perhaps, but I continue to believe such consenting acts between two minors shouldn't be criminalized.

The Prince William's County (Virginia) DA disagreed, however, and went after the teenager for manufacturing and distributing "child pornography" (to be clear, he was the "child" in question). To my mind that's already an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, but where the case really went off the rails is what happened next:

The officer went to court and got a search warrant for "[p]hotographs of the genitals, and other parts of the body of [Sims] that will be used as comparisons in recovered forensic evidence from the victim and suspect’s electronic devices. This includes a photograph of the suspect’s erect penis." And how do you get a photograph of a teenager's erect penis?

In a “locker room” in the center, [Detective] Abbott and two uniformed, armed officers executed the search warrant. Abbott ordered Sims to “pull down his pants so that photos could be taken of his penis.” After Sims complied, Abbott instructed Sims “to use his hand to manipulate his penis in different ways” to obtain an erection. However, Sims was unable to achieve an erection. Nonetheless, Abbott took photographs of Sims’ flaccid penis using Abbott’s cellular telephone. 

At that point, Abbott told the kid's attorney that if he couldn't achieve an erection on demand while surrounded by three armed officers in a police station, he'd take him to the hospital "to give him an erection-producing injection." It was here that public outrage finally compelled the government to back off.

Unsurprisingly, the teenager sued the officer for violating his constitutional rights -- but perhaps more surprisingly, he actually won (if you're thinking: "of course he won -- surely, police officers can't constitutionally force kids to masturbate in front of them," then I have some very sobering stories to tell you about how qualified immunity typically operates).