via The Daily Beast
A New York state hospital is facing questions from ethics experts after revelations that its doctors sedated a suspect last year at the behest of local police and carried out an anal cavity search for illegal drugs, Syracuse.com reports. Torrence Jackson—who reportedly had a lengthy criminal record and several run-ins with police prior to the incident—has said he did not consent to the procedure but was later billed by St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center for $4,595.12. “I have people basically trying to kill me,” Jackson said in a YouTube video. “They put me in this room and I’m yelling and screaming, ‘Don’t, don’t do anything to me... I don’t consent to y’all working on me.’” According to Syracuse.com, at least two doctors resisted the police-ordered procedure after an X-ray did not reveal any contraband. But after police got a judge to sign off on a search warrant, a hospital lawyer told the doctors that the warrant required them to use “any means” to retrieve the drugs, records show. Medical staff then reportedly sedated Jackson and performed the sigmoidoscopy using an 8-inch flexible tube, but found no drugs. “The whole thing is cuckoo nuts to me,” the suspect’s defense lawyer, Charles Keller, told Syracuse.com. “What country are we living in?”