“Significantly, a search of a particular residence cannot be ‘reasonably related’, to the probationary purpose when the officers involved do not even know of a probationer who is sufficiently connected to the residence. Moreover, if officers lack knowledge of a probationer’s advance consent when they search the residence, their actions are wholly arbitrary in the sense that they search without legal justification and with *1006 out any perceived limits to their authority”
How later courts described this case
- “Significantly, a search of a particular residence cannot be ‘reasonably related’, to the probationary purpose when the officers involved do not even know of a probationer who is sufficiently connected to the residence. Moreover, if officers lack knowledge of a probationer’s advance consent when they search the residence, their actions are wholly arbitrary in the sense that they search without legal justification and with *1006 out any perceived limits to their authority”
- "That persons under the same roof may legitimately harbor differing expectations of privacy is consistent with the principle that one's ability to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends upon the reasonableness of his or her individual expectations."
- “As our decisions indicate, searches that are undertaken pursuant to a probationer’s advance consent must be reasonably related to the purposes of probation.”
- "[A] person may validly consent in advance to warrantless searches and seizures in exchange for the opportunity to avoid serving a state prison term"
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Questioned by People v. Hoeninghaus, 16 Cal. Rptr. 3d 258 (2004)
Robles, supra, 23 Cal.4th 789, casts doubt on
The opinion
MOSK, J.
I concur in the judgment.
In this cause, as in People v. Woods (1999) 21 Cal.4th 668 [ 88 Cal.Rptr.2d 88 , 981 P.2d 1019 ], less than a year ago, we address an issue involving the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution with its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, on the one side, and the consent to searches and seizures that is demanded of a probationer as a condition of his probation under the law of the State of California, on the other.
Here, as in Woods , a majority of the court has attempted to resolve the interplay between the Fourth Amendment and state law on a probationer’s consent to searches and seizures by making adjustments to the former. In spite of their efforts, they have failed to arrive at an altogether satisfying result.
For my part, I would leave the Fourth Amendment alone, and simply declare what I believe to be implied under state law, namely, that a probationer’s consent to searches and seizures is limited to such as may be conducted for the purpose of ensuring his compliance with his probation and its terms.