"The door shut behind us, and she asked me to start removing my clothes," Flythe said. "I'm thinking, this must be what she means by the more thorough search."

When Flythe was naked, she says, "She told me to bend over and cough." Selimis again found nothing. Flythe said the officer then handed back her clothes and told her she was free to go.

In a sworn court statement, Selimis, a 26-year-old part-time officer, gave a different account. She said she stopped Flythe because she was staggering. "Her eyes were red and glassy, bloodshot, and she had a hyper-fidgety demeanor. She stated that she was coming from the Paschall projects and she had just smoked crack with her children."

Selimis said she picked up Flythe for "public drunkenness," and strip-searched her on the possibility that she might be concealing contraband.

She ultimately released Flythe without charging her with anything because she had "calmed down, she didn't appear intoxicated to me at all."

"I'm going to tell you honestly, [Flythe was] one of the nicest people I've encountered in Darby," Selimis testified.

Flythe's friend, Brinson, said in a recent interview that she spoke with Flythe immediately after the basketball game and saw no red eyes, fidgety demeanor or stumbling.

Likewise, her nephews, both honor students in Philadelphia middle schools, said they had never used drugs of any kind, with Flythe or anyone else.

Flythe said Selimis' assertion that she smoked crack with boys who were 8 and 10 at the time was absurd and outrageous. "First of all, I don't do drugs," she said.

Several months after the encounter, Flythe contacted a lawyer through an aunt's friend - former Philadelphia Housing Authority counsel Michael Pileggi, who now specializes in civil-rights litigation.

In October 2005, Pileggi filed a federal lawsuit on Flythe's behalf, alleging that Darby's police force had a pattern and practice of strip-search abuses.

Pileggi's arguments went to U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois, who was not impressed.

Significantly, the judge said Pileggi presented no evidence that Darby had such a blanket strip-search policy. As a result, he ruled that Flythe could not sue the town itself. Only Selimis' conduct would be on trial.

The ruling placed Flythe at a considerable disadvantage; courts usually grant police officers a lot of leeway for decisions made on the street, even when mistakes are made.

During a brief trial before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas J. Rueter, Selimis told the jury that she did not single out Flythe for special treatment. In fact, she testified, she had strip-searched more than 100 people in just two years.

She and her bosses argued strenuously that strip searches were an essential part of the war against drugs.

"We've brought people in that have two bags of marijuana in their pocket and 10 bags of marijuana in their rectum," Lt. Richard Gibney, Selimis' supervisor, testified.

Because of the limits on the case, the jury never learned that many municipalities strictly control strip searches.

Darby Chief Robert F. Smythe did not appear as a witness in the case and did not responded to requests for comments for this article.