State v. Heaton, Minn.Ct.App., 5/7/2010, petition for further review pending. Following a prison stint for unlawful possession of a firearm by an ineligible person, Corrections placed Mr. Heaton on intensive supervised release. One of his parole conditions stated:
The offender will submit at any time to an unannounced visit and/or search of the offender’s person, vehicle or premises by the agent/designee.
After a while, his parole officer promoted him to regular supervision. As luck would have it, shortly thereafter Mr. Heaton was a passenger in a vehicle that a Carlton County deputy stopped. The deputy arrested the driver on some warrant. For some reason – apparently not challenged - the deputy searched Mr. Heaton and found $3,000.00 in cash. Mr. Heaton said he’d sold his car but he couldn’t say to whom and he didn’t have a receipt. Nothing else happened on the side of the road. Later, however, the deputy called up Mr. Heaton’s parole officer to tell him about the stop, and Mr. Heaton did the same. The parole officer thought it a bit suspicious that Mr. Heaton had this wad of cash on a short order cook’s salary and no receipt so he went over to Mr. Heaton’s apartment. Mr. Heaton eventually showed up; the parole officer asked Mr. Heaton, who had immediately been cuffed when he got there, for consent to search the apartment; Mr. Heaton made no response. The officers tossed the place and found a gun and narcotics.
Mr. Heaton moved to suppress the gun and narcotics, arguing he did not consent to the search and that the parole office lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct the search. Apparently, no one spent too much time discerning whether Mr. Heaton had or had not given consent as the courts sent straight to the search issue.
Minnesota has previously said that a probationer has a diminished expectation of privacy so that a probationer’s home may be searched without a warrant so long as a valid condition of probation exists and authorities have reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct. State v. Anderson, 733 N.W.2d 128 (Minn. 2007); relying somewhat dubiously on United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112 (2001). [“We do not decide whether the probation condition so diminished, or completely eliminated, Knights' reasonable expectation of privacy ... that a search by a law enforcement officer without any individualized suspicion would have satisfied the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment.”]But, this holding has not been extended to parolees.
Parolees in Minnesota are subject to a search condition specified by statute, Minn.Stat. 244.14, subd. 4, which says that a parolee:
shall submit at any time to an unannounced search of the offender’s person, vehicle, or premises.
Getting to work, the court balances Mr. Heaton’s reasonable expectation of privacy with the state’s interest in making sure that parolees abide by their release terms and in protecting the public. It finds that Mr. Heaton’s interests were diminished the same as a probationer’s and so all that the officers needed was a reasonable suspicion.
Turning to that question, the court of appeals affirms the trial court’s determination that there was such reasonable suspicion. The trial court had identified four facts to support its determination that the officers had a reasonable suspicion: (1) Mr. Heaton’s status had recently been up graded from intensive supervision to regular supervision; (2) Mr. Heaton’s “thin” explanation for possession of a large amount of cash (3) in light of his cook’s salary, and (4) he’d been stopped with someone who had an active warrant. The court of appeals concedes that Mr. Heaton’s criminal record and status as a parolee would not support a reasonable suspicion; but, when considered along with everything else it was okay at least to mention this. The court rejects supporting a reasonable suspicion on Mr. Heaton’s presence with someone with a warrant; but, again, with everything else there was still a valid basis for a reasonable suspicion.
Judge Ross concurred in the result, but he wrote that the police have the right to search a parolee’s residence without any suspicion at all. He relies on Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843 (2006). The majority distinguished Samson because the California parole statute stated that parolees had to agree to be searched with or without cause. Well, here’s a (long) snippet from the syllabus of Samson:
Parolees, who are on the “continuum” of state-imposed punishments, have fewer expectations of privacy than probationers, because parole is more akin to imprisonment than probation is. “The essence of parole is release from prison, before the completion of sentence, on the condition that the prisoner abide by certain rules during the balance of the sentence.” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 477, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484. California's system is consistent with these observations. An inmate electing to complete his sentence out of physical custody remains in the Department of Corrections' legal custody for the remainder of his term and must comply with the terms and conditions of his parole. The extent and reach of those conditions demonstrate that parolees have severely diminished privacy expectations by virtue of their status alone. Additionally, as in Knights, the state law's parole search condition was clearly expressed to petitioner, who signed an order submitting to the condition and thus was unambiguously aware of it. Examining the totality of the circumstances, petitioner did not have an expectation of privacy that society would recognize as legitimate. The State's interests, by contrast, are substantial. A State has an “ ‘overwhelming interest’ ” in supervising parolees because they “are more likely to commit future criminal offenses.” Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 365, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344. Similarly, a State's interests in reducing recidivism, thereby promoting reintegration and positive citizenship among probationers and parolees, warrant privacy intrusions that would not otherwise be tolerated under the Fourth Amendment. The Amendment does not render States powerless to address these concerns effectively. California's 60– to 70–percent recidivism rate demonstrates that most parolees are ill prepared to handle the pressures of reintegration and require intense supervision. The State Legislature has concluded that, given the State's number of parolees and its high recidivism rate, an individualized suspicion requirement would undermine the State's ability to effectively supervise parolees and protect the public from criminal acts by reoffenders. Contrary to petitioner's argument, the fact that some States and the Federal Government require a level of individualized suspicion before searching a parolee is of little relevance in determining whether California's system is drawn to meet the State's needs and is reasonable, taking into account a parolee's substantially diminished expectation of privacy.
Justices Stevens, Souter and Breyer dissented; Justice Stevens said that the court had created “a regime of suspicionless searches, conducted pursuant to a blanket grant of discretion untethered by any procedural safeguards, by law enforcement personnel who have no special interest in the welfare of the parolee or probationer.” So there.
A petition for review is pending.
No comments:
Post a Comment