Montoya de Hernandez refused the X-ray. She sat curled up in a chair, leaning to one side and exhibiting, to quote Court of Appeals documents, symptoms consistent with “heroic efforts to resist the usual calls of nature.”
Unfortunately for drug mules, the usual calls of nature are amplified by anxiety. Anxiety causes a mild contraction of the muscles of the rectum walls. This reduces the receptacle’s volume, which means it takes less filling to activate the stretch receptors and confer ye olde sense of urgency. Rodriguez confirms this: “You have to relax. If you’re nervous, your body clenches up.” (Even mild anxiety has this effect. Using rectal balloons and regretful volunteers, motility researcher William Whitehead found that anxious people tend to have, on average, smaller rectal volumes.) In an episode of markedly high anxiety—giving a speech, say, or smuggling heroin—the effect can be dramatic. It’s the last thing an “alimentary canal smuggler” needs. Mike Jones tells the story of a drug mule whose sphincter surrendered on a flight into O’Hare. The man retrieved the packets from the airplane toilet and, rather than wash them off and reswallow them, stuffed them into the socks he had on—with predictable and life-changing results.
Montoya de Hernandez’s lawyer tried, unsuccessfully, to argue that the plastic underpants and the eight recent passport stamps into and out of Miami and Los Angeles* did not constitute a clear indication that she was smuggling, and that her lengthy detention had been in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, however, reversed the conviction. And on it went, until Montoya de Hernandez and her stalwart anus made their way to the highest court of the land.? With Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall dissenting, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals judgment. By refusing an X-ray and resisting “the call of nature,” the Court concluded, Montoya de Hernandez was herself responsible for the duration and discomfort of her detention. The phrase “the call of nature” occurs so many times in the text of the case that I found myself applying a David Attenborough accent as I read.
United States v. Montoya de Hernandez set the precedent for the 1990 case of Delaney Abi Odofin, who spent twenty-four days in detention before passing the first of his narcotics-filled balloons. “An otherwise permissible border detention,” the Justia.com summary concluded, “does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment simply because a detainee’s intestinal fortitude leads to an unexpectedly long period of detention.”
How is such fortitude even possible? Why didn’t Odofin’s mass contractions seize the day? Why didn’t his colon burst? Whitehead explained that the body has yet another rupture-preventing protective mechanism. A rectum that remains distended long enough will eventually trigger a slowing or even a shutdown of the production line, all the way upstream to the stomach if need be. Contractions of the colon and small intestine wane, and gastric emptying slows. This mechanism was documented in a 1990 study in which twelve students at the University of Munich were paid to hold back as long as they could. To see, one, whether and how long it’s possible to suppress the urge, and, two, what happens when you do. The authors were impressed. “Volunteers succeeded in suppressing the urge to defecate to an amazing extent.” Having just read Odofin’s case, I wasn’t all that amazed. Only three of the twelve made it to the fourth day.