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Herbert Lee Scruggs Jr. was 30 at the time Portland police took him into custody and strip searched him for drugs on Nov. 4, 2011.

(Multnomah County Sheriff's Office)

A Portland police officer who pried open the buttocks of a drug suspect and removed a baggie of cocaine committed such a serious violation of the man's privacy that his conviction must be overturned, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.

The cocaine was the result of an unlawful search and shouldn't have been allowed as evidence used to convict Herbert Lee Scruggs Jr., 30, of cocaine dealing, the appeals court ruled.

"(Scruggs) was subjected to a search -- a strip search and then the forcible manipulation of his body and his buttocks to locate evidence therein -- that was dehumanizing and humiliating," wrote the court, noting that Scruggs was in handcuffs. "(T)he search of defendant was a 'deep intrusion' into his privacy."

Four months after Scruggs' November 2011 arrest, a Multnomah County Circuit judge had found just that.

But the judge further decided that the cocaine could still be used as evidence because it eventually would have been found -- during a strip search when Scruggs was booked into the county jail system.

But the appeals court disagreed -- ruling that the prosecution didn't support that argument with documented evidence entered into the record.

According to an appeals court summary of the case:

Scruggs' troubles with the law began about 5 a.m. on Nov. 4, 2011, after police used binoculars to watch him meet with two suspected buyers in an area of Portland's Old Town known as "Crack Alley." One of the officers saw Scruggs dig his hand into the front of his pants, pull out something, then exchange the item for what appeared to be money.

A short while later, Scruggs appeared to do the same with another person he met, police said. Officers moved in and took Scruggs, who they also believed to be in violation of his probation, into custody.

To give Scruggs privacy, police brought Scruggs to the Old Town precinct and ordered him to take off his clothes. Because they knew that drug suspects often hide dope in their anal cavities, Officer Matt Wells told Scruggs to bend over and cough.

"Defendant bent over, but only at a 45-degree angle, grabbed his buttock cheeks and 'halfheartedly' spread them (but not to the point that Wells could observe anything), coughed, and then quickly stood back up," the appeals court wrote. "Those actions led Wells to believe that defendant was concealing something deeper inside his buttocks."

Wells, Officer Joshua Sparks and another unnamed officer then forced Scruggs to fully bend over. Wells then noticed that Scruggs was clenching his buttocks, so the officer spread them apart. Wells discovered the bag of cocaine, which the officer testified was "pressed against, but not inside, defendant's anus," the summary states.

Wells also testified that he wouldn't have grabbed the bag if it had "in any way, shape or form internalized, for lack of a better term. ... because obviously, that's about as intrusive a search as you're going to get." Wells said it was bureau policy to get a warrant if the bag had been inside Scruggs' body cavity, the summary states.

The prosecution, however, argued that officers should be allowed to conduct a "thorough" search of suspects for drugs. And even if the search was deemed unlawful, the prosecution said Scruggs would have been strip-searched upon entry into the jail system, according to the appeals court summary.

A jail sergeant testified that newly booked inmates are asked to disrobe, bend over and cough if they've been arrested under suspicion of a drug offense, the arresting officers think they're hiding contraband or they've been arrested for a probation violation.

The sergeant said that if an inmate doesn't cooperate, jail deputies don't use their hands to spread apart an inmate's buttocks, but they might detain the inmate in a special cell or send the inmate to the hospital where medical staff could remove any contraband, the summary states.

The sergeant, however, cited the wrong policy number for jail procedures, and the prosecutor didn't submit the text of the proper policy into the court record.

So the appeals court found that the prosecutor hadn't proven his case.

That also meant that the appeals court stopped short of analyzing whether the jail's strip-search policy was overly broad and unconstitutional. The decision will effectively remove Scruggs' felony convictions -- for drug dealing, drug dealing within 1,000 feet of a school and cocaine possession -- from his record.

Scruggs, however, was sentenced to more than three years in prison and has already served his time.

He has previous felony convictions, starting when he was 18 and first convicted for manufacturing or delivering drugs.

Wednesday's ruling was made by a three- judge panel of the appeals court: Darleen Ortega, Joel DeVore, Chris Garrett.

Read the opinion.

-- Aimee Green

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