Title: Idaho v. Maxim

State: idaho

Issuer: Idaho Supreme Court (criminal)

Document:

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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF IDAHO   
Docket No. 45950 
 
STATE OF IDAHO, 
  
               Plaintiff-Respondent, 
 
v. 
 
ANDREW CHARLES MAXIM, 
  
               Defendant-Appellant. 
 
 
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Boise, August 2019 Term 
 
Opinion Filed:  December 4, 2019 
 
Karel A. Lehrman, Clerk 
 
Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Ada 
County.  Peter G. Barton, District Judge.   
District court decision denying motion to suppress, reversed, judgment of 
conviction vacated, and case remanded for further proceedings consistent with this 
opinion. 
 
Eric Frederickson, Idaho State Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for appellant. 
Brian Richard Dickson argued. 
Lawrence G. Wasden, Idaho Attorney General, Boise, for respondent. Jeffery D. Nye 
argued. 
_____________________________ 
 
 
BURDICK, Chief Justice. 
Andrew Charles Maxim appeals from the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress 
drug evidence found on his person after police searched the home he was living in without a 
warrant. The district court found that the exclusionary rule need not apply under the 
circumstances because the police would have inevitably discovered the heroin despite any 
alleged illegality. The dispositive issues on appeal are whether a probationer can object to a 
search of his home or person when he has waived his Fourth Amendment rights as a condition of 
probation and whether the district court erred in its inevitable-discovery analysis.   
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I. 
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 
On September 27, 2017, Officer Kyle Ludwig and a second police officer visited an 
apartment complex in Meridian, Idaho, after police dispatch had received a call from the 
apartment manager. The manager told dispatch that she had heard from a tenant that there was 
suspected drug use in an apartment where children also resided. Upon the officer’s arrival at the 
complex, the manager flagged down the officers and explained that she received the information 
“a day or two before,” but that “strange people” had been in the apartment that morning.  
 
Upon approaching the apartment, the officers noticed that there were children’s toys on 
the concrete patio outside the entrance. Officer Ludwig knocked on the front door and noticed 
there was “some give to the door.” A second later, he knocked louder and more forcefully, and 
by doing so, pushed the door open. After a few second’s pause at the threshold, Officer Ludwig 
entered the apartment and announced himself as police. An unnamed adult female walked 
through the first-floor hallway immediately to the left of entrance, and, upon questioning, 
informed Officer Ludwig that she did not live there. Officer Ludwig instructed her to stand with 
the second officer on the patio. Upon investigating the apartment, Officer Ludwig found one of 
the doors in the first-floor hallway was locked. He knocked on the door and, 20 seconds later, 
Maxim emerged and closed the door behind him.   
 
Officer Ludwig instructed Maxim to put his hands on his head, and Maxim complied. 
Upon being asked whether he had anything illegal on him, Maxim started patting his pockets and 
said “I have a knife” and began to reach in his pocket. Immediately, Officer Ludwig instructed 
Maxim to return his hands to his head and Maxim obeyed. Affixing Maxim’s hands atop 
Maxim’s head with his left hand, Officer Ludwig led Maxim toward the apartment’s entrance. 
Upon reaching the entryway, Officer Ludwig asked Maxim where the knife was located. Maxim 
said, “It’s in my right pocket,” and continued walking towards the front door. With his right 
hand, Officer Ludwig began to pat down Maxim’s right pocket (while still affixing Maxim’s 
hands to his head with his left hand) and Maxim continued walking. Officer Ludwig ordered 
Maxim to halt, and Maxim complied. Still holding his hands above his head, Officer Ludwig 
turned out Maxim’s pocket with his right hand. After removing the knife and placing it on a 
foyer table, Officer Ludwig reached back and felt through the outturned pocket and removed a 
small, multicolored silicon container. Officer Ludwig would later testify that such containers, in 
his professional experience, often contain heroin. Before opening the container, Officer Ludwig 
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asked Maxim how much heroin the container held, and Maxim responded “It’s not mine . . . I 
just picked it up off the table.” Officer Ludwig placed Maxim in handcuffs, and sat him outside 
on the patio.  
The officers searched the apartment, but no children were present, though children 
appeared to live there. The door that Maxim exited was locked, and no response came from 
within upon the officer’s prompting. About a half hour after the officers entered the house, one 
of the children who lived at the apartment was dropped off by the school bus. Officer Ludwig 
placed Maxim in the back of a patrol vehicle, and, upon further questioning, Maxim revealed that 
he was on probation for grand theft and Officer Ludwig had dispatch run his name through the 
system. The search revealed that Maxim had outstanding warrants for failure to appear. Maxim 
allowed the officer to call the apartment owner on his cellphone, and she arrived shortly 
thereafter. She allowed the officers to unlock the hallway door with a screwdriver to reveal a 
bathroom. A second male was found hiding behind the shower curtain.  
The State charged Maxim with felony possession of a controlled substance. Maxim 
promptly filed a motion to suppress “all evidence obtained as the result of an illegal, warrantless 
entry into [his] residence and/or an illegal pat-down.” Maxim argued that there were no exigent 
circumstances to justify the officer’s warrantless entry of the home because no facts 
demonstrated an imminent emergency. He also claimed that Officer Ludwig unlawfully frisked 
him because, despite admitting to possessing a knife in his pocket, the circumstances were 
insufficient for Officer Ludwig to reasonably believe that Maxim was armed and presently 
dangerous.  
In response, the State asserted a number of alternative arguments. First, the State 
contended that Maxim did not have “standing” to object to the searches because he did not have 
a “reasonable or legitimate expectation of privacy in the area searched. . . .” To prove this, the 
State pointed out that Maxim denied living at the apartment when asked by Officer Ludwig and 
that he waived his Fourth Amendment rights under his terms of probation. Next, the State argued 
the officers did not need a warrant to search the apartment because they were performing their 
community-caretaking function. Lastly, the State argued that even if there were Fourth 
Amendment violations, the exclusionary rule need not apply because “the police would have 
utilized certain proper and predictable investigatory procedures; and . . . such procedures would 
have inevitably led to the discovery of the evidence . . . .”  
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Maxim responded by arguing that he lived at the apartment at the time of the search and 
that he was not required to have an ownership interest in the apartment to have a reasonable 
expectation of privacy. Maxim asserted that he retained Fourth Amendment standing because the 
officers were unaware of the waiver at the time of the alleged violations.  
The district court held a hearing on the motion in late December 2017. At the hearing, 
Maxim testified that he had been living at the apartment for almost a month prior to his arrest. 
Officer Ludwig testified that he did not know of Maxim’s probation status at the time he entered 
the apartment or frisked Maxim. At the hearing, the district court found that Maxim made a 
sufficient showing to shift the burden to the State. The district court took the rest of the issues 
under advisement. On January 30, 2018, the district court entered a written decision and order 
denying Maxim’s motion and concluded that discovery of the heroin was inevitable. Since the 
discovery was inevitable and the exclusionary rule would not apply, the district court reasoned it 
was not necessary “to determine whether the actual entry and pat-down of Maxim were lawful” 
or to “analyze the effectiveness of Mr. Maxim’s waiver unknown to the officers at the time.”  
Shortly thereafter, Maxim pleaded guilty to possession of heroin, reserving the right to 
appeal the denial of the motion to dismiss. He timely appealed.  
II. 
ISSUES ON APPEAL 
1. Can the existence of a Fourth Amendment waiver make an otherwise unreasonable search 
of a probationer’s home reasonable even if the police were not aware of the waiver at the 
time of the search?   
2. Did the district court err in finding that the evidence would have been inevitably 
discovered? 
 
III. 
STANDARD OF REVIEW 
When reviewing a decision on a motion to suppress, this Court “accepts the trial court’s 
findings of fact that are supported by substantial evidence, but freely reviews the application of 
constitutional principles to the facts as found.” State v. Mullins, 164 Idaho 493, 496, 432 P.3d 42, 
45 (2018) (quoting State v. McNeely, 162 Idaho 413, 414–15, 398 P.3d 146, 147–48 (2017)).  
IV. 
ANALYSIS 
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects “[t]he right of the 
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
and seizures . . . .” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The “basic purpose” of the Fourth Amendment “is to 
safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental 
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officials.” Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2213 (2018) (quoting Camara v. 
Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 528 (1967)). “The 
Founding generation crafted the Fourth Amendment as a response to the reviled ‘general 
warrants’ and ‘writs of assistance’ of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage 
through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.” Id. (citation omitted) 
(internal quotation marks omitted).  
 
Determining whether government activity constitutes a “search” under the Fourth 
Amendment is an inquiry that has evolved with the times. In the early days, the search doctrine 
was “tied to common-law trespass,” and asked whether the government “obtain[ed] information 
by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area.” United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 
400, 405, 406 n. 3 (2012). In recent times, the Supreme Court has established that “the Fourth 
Amendment protects people, not places,” and expanded the concept of the Amendment to 
government violations of an “expectation of privacy” that “society is prepared to recognize as 
‘reasonable.’” Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2213 (quoting Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 
(1979)). Both historically and textually, a person’s home is the centerpiece of the Amendment’s 
constitutional protection. Collins v. Virginia, 138 S. Ct. 1663, 1670 (2018).  
 
But even if a Fourth Amendment search has occurred, the Fourth Amendment only 
forbids unreasonable searches and seizures. As expressed in the Amendment’s text, a search 
conducted without a warrant is presumptively unreasonable. Id. at 1670. But the United States 
Supreme Court and this Court have recognized certain exceptions to the Amendment’s warrant 
requirement. State v. Wulff, 157 Idaho 416, 337 P.3d 575 (2014); Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 
177 (1990). For example, consent may render a Fourth Amendment search reasonable. Wulff, 
157 Idaho at 419, 337 P.3d at 578; Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 181. This is true where a probationer 
has consented to a search by virtue of a term in a probation agreement. See State v. Jaskowski, 
163 Idaho 257, 260, 409 P.3d 837, 840 (2018).  
If a Fourth Amendment violation has taken place, then, generally speaking, a defendant 
may seek to have the court exclude evidence obtained by the unconstitutional police conduct. 
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961). As the United States Supreme Court originally 
explained: “[T]he purpose of the exclusionary rule ‘is to deter—to compel respect for the 
constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available way—by removing the incentive to 
disregard it.’” Id. at 656. But the United States Supreme Court has also recognized circumstances 
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where the exclusionary rule need not apply, finding under the circumstances that the costs of 
exclusion outweigh the goals of deterrence. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 137 (2009) 
(“Our cases establish that such suppression is not an automatic consequence of a Fourth 
Amendment violation. . . . the question turns on the culpability of the police and the potential of 
exclusion to deter wrongful police conduct.”).  
As applied, a defendant bringing a motion to suppress must show that there was a Fourth 
Amendment search, that he has standing to challenge the search, and that the search was 
unreasonable. State v. Hoskins, 165 Idaho 217, 220–21, 443 P.3d 231, 234–35 (2019). If the 
defendant makes this showing—for example, by demonstrating a “search” which violated his 
Fourth Amendment rights and the absence of a warrant—then the burden will shift to the State to 
show an exception to the warrant requirement exists or that the search was reasonable under the 
circumstances. Id.  
This case asks what happens when police unconstitutionally enter a home, frisk an 
individual, arrest him, and, only after all that, discover that the individual has signed a Fourth 
Amendment waiver as a condition of probation.  
The State’s answer is that no violation actually occurs. Under the State’s view, once 
Maxim signed the Fourth Amendment waiver as a term of probation, he could no longer 
maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy as required to assert a Fourth Amendment violation. 
This, the State argues, is the “standing” requirement of the Fourth Amendment. Under this view, 
the State posits a scenario where, once a probationer has signed a Fourth Amendment waiver, no 
Fourth Amendment violation can ever occur, no matter how egregious the police conduct. As 
explained below, we cannot agree. 
There are a few glitches in the State’s proposed analysis. The State attempts to wedge 
Maxim’s Fourth Amendment waiver into the “search” and “standing” components of the Fourth 
Amendment analysis, despite this Court’s precedent holding that such waivers represent consent 
to searches and thus implicate the “reasonableness” component of the analysis.  
 
First, we must correct the State’s misinterpretation of Fourth Amendment standing. 
Standing in the Fourth Amendment context is used as shorthand for the question of whether the 
defendant personally has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched. See State v. 
Mann, 162 Idaho 36, 39 n.1, 394 P.3d 79, 82 n.1 (2017). Originally, the term was used because 
Fourth Amendment rights, like almost all Constitutional rights, are personal. So, much like 
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Article III standing requires a plaintiff to have personally suffered an injury in order to bring a 
claim in federal court, a criminal defendant must show that his Fourth Amendment rights have 
been violated to claim the protection of the exclusionary rule. See Byrd v. United States, 138 S. 
Ct. 1518, 1530 (2018); United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 85 (1980) (“[D]efendants charged 
with . . . possession may only claim the benefits of the exclusionary rule if their own Fourth 
Amendment rights have in fact been violated.”). Indeed, as indicated by the cases cited by the 
State, standing is most useful in contexts where third parties are implicated. Minnesota v. Carter, 
525 U.S. 83, 85–91 (1998) (rejecting a defendant’s argument that he could object to the search of 
an acquaintance’s purse that he dumped drugs into moments before police arrived on the scene); 
Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 100–06 (1980) (determining that two defendants could not 
object to the “search” of an apartment when the duo were only present in the apartment for the 
“business transaction” of packaging illegal drugs). Thus, the focus of Fourth Amendment 
standing centers on whether the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated, not 
whether the defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Here, Maxim quite clearly asserts 
his Fourth Amendment rights were violated. Indeed, the State concedes that Maxim lived at the 
apartment which was searched by the officers. Surely, a search and seizure of Maxim’s person 
implicates his Fourth Amendment rights. Who else would those rights belong to?  
Instead of Fourth Amendment standing, the State’s arguments are better construed to 
assert that the police action in this case does not qualify as a “search” under the Fourth 
Amendment. Indeed, whether police activity constitutes a Fourth Amendment search is the 
question that engendered the “reasonable expectation of privacy” language. See Katz v. United 
States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). While there are various formulations of 
what constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, there is no question that a police 
officer entering into a home is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment: “When the Government 
obtains information by physically intruding on persons, houses, papers, or effects, a search 
within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment has undoubtedly occurred.” Florida v. 
Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 5 (2013) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).  
The State’s argument overlooks that the concept of privacy announced in Katz exists in 
addition to, not in replacement of, the traditional property concept of searches. Id. at 5. So while 
the Fourth Amendment protects a broader “zone of privacy” than explicitly listed in the 
Amendment, that “zone” can be easily defined by the “the unambiguous physical dimensions of 
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an individual’s home.” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 589 (1980). Indeed, the “physical 
entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is 
directed.” United States v. U.S. Dist. Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972) (citations omitted). So, 
“when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals.” Collins v. Virginia, 
138 S. Ct. 1663, 1670 (2018) (quoting Jardines, 569 U.S. at 6). Indeed, “at the very core of the 
Fourth Amendment stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from 
unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Payton, 445 U.S. at 589–90 (quoting Silverman v. United 
States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961)).  
As a result, the warrantless entry into a home is presumptively unreasonable. State v. 
Maland, 140 Idaho 817, 822, 103 P.3d 430, 435 (2004). This presumption may be overcome 
when the State proves an exception to the warrant requirement, such as consent or exigency. 
State v. Wulff, 157 Idaho 416, 419, 337 P.3d 575, 578 (2014). Such exceptions mean that the 
search would be “reasonable” and, therefore, not violate the Fourth Amendment. But to accept 
that no Fourth Amendment “search” occurs when police enter a private home without a warrant 
would so severely distort the Fourth Amendment as to render it unrecognizable.  Here, there is 
no dispute that the officers entered the apartment without a warrant or permission. The State thus 
bears the burden to show an exception to the warrant requirement.  
This is where Maxim’s Fourth Amendment waiver enters the analysis. Our case law on 
Fourth Amendment waivers has consistently and correctly viewed them under the rubric of 
consent to searches, and thus, affecting the reasonableness prong of the analysis: 
The common guiding principle underlying our decisions . . . is that courts 
evaluating the scope of the Fourth Amendment waiver must look to the language 
used in the condition of probation in order to determine whether the search was 
objectively reasonable.  
State v. Jaskowski, 163 Idaho 257, 261, 409 P.3d 837, 841 (2018) (emphasis added). So, despite 
the State’s insistence that Maxim’s consent affects the “search” component of the analysis and 
not the “reasonableness” component, we cannot agree. Indeed, to parrot an observation from the 
late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “To describe a consented search as a noninvasion of 
privacy and thus a non-search is strange in the extreme.” Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 186 
(1990). 
Thus, we must determine whether the officer’s actions in this case were reasonable. To 
determine whether the officers’ actions were reasonable, we look first to the language of the 
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Fourth Amendment waiver. State v. Jaskowski, 163 Idaho 257, 261, 409 P.3d 837, 841 (2018). 
Specifically, the State pointed out that Maxim had agreed to the following term:  
Search: I consent to the search of my person, residence, vehicle, personal 
property, and other real property or structures owned or leased by me, or for 
which I am the controlling authority conducted by any agent of [the Idaho 
Department of Correction] or a law enforcement officer. I hereby waive my rights 
under the Fourth Amendment and the Idaho constitution concerning searches. 
The State is correct that this is a broad grant of consent. It is not conditioned on the “at the 
request of” language like that of Jaskowski. See id. Rather, it is like the language1 in State v. 
Gawron, 112 Idaho 841, 843, 736 P.2d 1295, 1297 (1987). But these Fourth Amendment waivers 
do not eviscerate Fourth Amendment rights, they only tip the scales of the reasonableness 
analysis. In Gawron, this Court responded to the defendant’s argument that such broad waivers 
are an unreasonable invasion of Fourth Amendment rights by recognizing that “such persons 
conditionally released to societies have a reduced expectation of privacy, thereby rendering 
intrusions by government authorities ‘reasonable’ which otherwise would be unreasonable or 
invalid under traditional constitutional concepts.” Id. As a result, the State’s suggestion that such 
a waiver categorically precludes a probationer from succeeding in a motion to suppress is 
incorrect. To be sure, the challenge is more difficult, but not impossible.  
With this modified analysis in mind, we must look to the reasonableness of the 
government’s actions considering “all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion 
of a citizen’s personal security.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 (1968). In doing so, we freeze-
frame the factual circumstances to focus on what the officers knew at the time of the alleged 
violation. See id. at 20 (determining whether police action was unreasonable by looking to 
whether “the officer’s action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related 
in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.”).  
Here, the determinative fact in this case is that the officers did not know about Maxim’s 
Fourth Amendment waiver at the time of the alleged unconstitutional conduct. In fact, they did 
not even know that Maxim was in the apartment. At oral argument, the State conceded that the 
                                                 
1 The term of probation at issue in Gawron provided: 
That probationer does hereby agree and consent to the search of his person, automobile, real 
property, and any other property at any time and at any place by any law enforcement officer, 
peace officer, or probation officer, and does waive his constitutional right to be free from such 
searches. 
State v. Gawron, 112 Idaho 841, 842, 736 P.2d 1295, 1296 (1987) 
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officer’s actions in entering the apartment were unreasonable, so it’s puzzling how the discovery 
of a waiver retroactively makes the actions reasonable. Had the officers known that a probationer 
who signed a Fourth Amendment waiver resided at the apartment, this equation would surely be 
different. But the only question presented by these facts is whether the existence of a Fourth 
Amendment waiver can transform the officer’s otherwise illegal actions into reasonable ones 
despite being unaware of the waiver at the time he acted.  
We hold that a Fourth Amendment waiver cannot salvage an otherwise unreasonable 
entry into a home under the Fourth Amendment if the police officers were unaware of the waiver 
at the time of the unconstitutional search. We are not alone in this common-sense approach. See 
Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 856 n.5 (2006) (“Under California precedent . . . an officer 
would not act reasonably in conducting a suspicionless search absent knowledge that the person 
stopped for the search is a parolee.”); United States v. Job, 871 F.3d 852, 859 (9th Cir. 2017) 
(“Police officers must know about a probationer’s Fourth Amendment search waiver before they 
conduct a search in order for the waiver to serve as a justification for the search.”). The 
discovery of a Fourth Amendment waiver after the fact should not serve as a deus ex machina 
allowing the State to rewrite the story in the courtroom when the police’s actions were 
unconstitutional outside of it. See State v. Saldivar, 165 Idaho 388, 393, 446 P.3d 446, 451 
(2019) (noting that a similar argument by the State dealing with a parolee “is essentially a post 
hoc justification for the conduct of the police, based on information the police did not know at 
the time.”) 
Even if the officer’s actions were unreasonable, the drug evidence could still be 
admissible under the inevitable-discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. See Nix v. 
Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 440–41 (1984). The United State Supreme Court has defined the 
inevitable-discovery doctrine based on a weakened deterrence ground: “If the prosecution can 
establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would 
have been discovered by lawful means . . . then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the 
evidence should be received.” Id. at 444. “The premise is that law enforcement should be ‘in the 
same, not a worse, position that they would have been’ absent the misconduct.” State v. 
Downing, 163 Idaho 26, 31, 407 P.3d 1285, 1290 (2017).  
In Nix v. Williams, the United States Supreme Court held that evidence relating to the 
discovery of a murder victim’s body could still be admissible despite Sixth Amendment 
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violations that helped lead to its discovery. 467 U.S. at 444. There, police officers picked up a 
murder suspect, and, in the process of transporting him, deliberately elicited incriminating 
statements in violation of his right to counsel. Id. at 436. The questioning resulted in the 
defendant leading the police officers to the body of his murder victim. Id. However, independent 
of those events, a search team was combing the same area because the victim’s clothes had been 
discovered nearby. Id. The team was within a few miles of locating the body, but the search was 
halted once the defendant agreed to cooperate. Id. 
The Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that the evidence relating to the victim’s 
body was not subject to the exclusionary rule despite the illegality of the interrogation, because 
the State had carried its burden to show that the evidence inevitably would have been discovered. 
Id. at 450. The search was undertaken five hours prior to the questioning, and was only 
suspended after the defendant agreed to cooperate with police. Id. at 449. The leader of the 
search testified that the search party would have searched the area where the body was found, 
was instructed to search culverts (which is where the body was hidden), and would have resumed 
its task if the defendant did not actually lead police to the body. Id. Based on this testimony, the 
Court was satisfied that the evidence would have inevitably been found. Id. at 450. Thus, 
excluding the evidence in such a situation would put the State in a worse position than it would 
have been in without the illegality. Id. at 447.  
Here, if we put the police in the same position they would be in without the police 
misconduct, the police are left with no other investigatory wheels in motion. As we have stated 
on prior occasions, “the inevitable discovery exception does not permit us to speculate on the 
course of action the investigation could have taken in the absence of [the Constitutional 
violation]—even if that alternate course likely would have yielded the evidence.” Downing, 163 
Idaho at 32, 407 P.3d at 1291. A police investigation often takes branching paths. The inevitable-
discovery doctrine presupposes parallel paths leading toward the inevitable discovery of 
evidence. If, because of illegal police action, one path arrives at the evidence before the other 
does, then the State will be permitted to prove that the existing alternative path would have 
yielded the evidence even if the existing alternative path was cut short due to the discovery of the 
evidence. However, the split in the investigation which creates these parallel paths must occur 
prior to or independent of the illegality, not because of it. The question is not what legal path the 
police would have inevitably taken which could have yielded the evidence. The question is what 
12 
legal path the police actually took which would have inevitably yielded the evidence. We again 
stress the astute observation of our Court of Appeals: “The inevitable discovery doctrine ‘is not 
intended to swallow the exclusionary rule whole by substituting what the police should have 
done for what they really did.’” Id. (quoting State v. Holman, 109 Idaho 382, 392, 707 P.2d 493, 
503 (Ct. App. 1985)) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).  
 The question becomes whether the State can prove that the evidence in question would 
have been inevitably discovered even if the police illegality is removed from the equation. The 
State did not meet this burden. Here, unlike Nix, there was no parallel path which would have led 
to the discovery of the evidence. There were no investigatory efforts aimed at Maxim. In 
addition, the district court’s analysis relied in a large measure on prolonged timelines that could 
not have accounted for all the permutations of possible events. The district court reasoned that “if 
[the officers] had stayed outside the apartment and the occupants had ignored their requests to 
respond,” the officers would not have abandoned their inquiry, and “the [apartment] owner 
would have eventually given consent for the officers to enter.” The district court reasoned that 
because Maxim’s girlfriend stated she was unaware Maxim was in her apartment, it is likely 
“had [she] been contacted before Mr. Maxim [was] found and arrested . . . she still would have 
permitted the police to enter and search the apartment before permitting her child to enter.” Once 
in the apartment with the owner’s consent, the officers would not have ignored a locked 
bathroom during their search, and would therefore have located Maxim. Having found him 
hiding “[a]fter a long suspicious wait for consent,” they would have run his name through their 
system, found his arrest warrant, searched him, and discovered the heroin. In Nix, the evidence 
was found “within a short time” and in “essentially the same condition” as a result of the 
independent search. 467 U.S. at 438. Here, there is simply too much time and too many 
independent actors to presume that the officer would have found the evidence in a short period of 
time or in essentially the same condition. As a result, we determine that the district court erred by 
speculating about what the police could have done instead of what they did do.  
V. 
CONCLUSION 
We reverse the district court’s order denying Maxim’s motion to suppress. We hold that a 
Fourth Amendment waiver which is unknown to an officer at the time of a Fourth Amendment 
violation cannot be relied on to assert that the search was reasonable. We also determine that the 
district court misapplied the inevitable discovery doctrine by engaging in a speculative analysis 
13 
that did not rely on an investigative path set in motion prior to or independent of the unlawful 
police activity. We vacate the district court’s judgment of conviction, reverse its denial of 
Maxim’s motion to suppress, and remand for further proceedings consistent with opinion.  
Justices STEGNER and MOELLER CONCUR.  
BEVAN, Justice, dissenting in part. 
This is a case about the proper scope of and the entitlement to the protections of the 
Fourth Amendment by a probationer who has explicitly “waiv[ed his] rights under the Fourth 
Amendment and the Idaho Constitution concerning searches.” In my view, the proper legal 
standard for this case requires Maxim, as the defendant asserting his Fourth Amendment rights 
were violated, to first establish three things: “the defendant [1] ‘must come forward with 
evidence sufficient to show there was a Fourth Amendment search, [2] [the defendant] has 
standing to challenge the search, and [3] the search was illegal.’ ” State v. Hoskins, 165 Idaho 
217, 220–21, 443 P.3d 231, 234–35 (2019). Without a proper showing that Maxim has standing 
to challenge the search, the remaining merits of Maxim’s claims, including the unreasonableness 
of the officers’ conduct, is immaterial to the analysis of the Court. I would therefore affirm the 
district court’s denial of the motion to suppress because Maxim lacks standing. The majority and 
I agree on the district court’s inappropriate application of the inevitable discovery doctrine, but 
that analysis is unnecessary given my conclusion that Maxim lacks standing to assert a 
constitutional violation here.  
To reiterate, as to Maxim’s waiver of his constitutional rights, the probation agreement 
which he signed required two things of him, both consent to search and a waiver of his rights 
under the United States and Idaho constitutions: 
Search: I consent to the search of my person, residence, vehicle, personal 
property, and other real property or structures owned or leased by me, or for 
which I am the controlling authority conducted by any agent of IDOC of a law 
enforcement officer. I hereby waive my rights under the Fourth Amendment and 
the Idaho constitution concerning searches. 
(Emphasis added). 
We recently held that the “common guiding principle underlying our decisions in [these 
kinds of cases] is that courts evaluating the scope of the Fourth Amendment waiver must look to 
the language used in the condition of probation in order to determine whether the search was 
objectively reasonable.” State v. Jaskowski, 163 Idaho 257, 261, 409 P.3d 837, 841 (2018). That 
common guiding principle requires that we view the clause as a whole and not evaluate the 
14 
reasonableness of the search before we determine whether Maxim has standing to assert his 
rights. State v. Mann, 162 Idaho 36, 41, 394 P.3d 79, 84 (2017) (“[E]ven if a search is 
unreasonable, a defendant must have a privacy interest that was invaded by the search in order to 
suppress evidence discovered in the search.”) (quoting Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 133–34 
(1978)). For example, in Mann, this Court held that an unauthorized driver of a rental car lacks 
standing to challenge a search of the rental car. Mann, 162 Idaho at 42, 394 P.3d at 85.When a 
search is challenged, the defendant bears the burden of showing that he or she had a reasonable 
expectation of privacy in the place searched. Id. (citation omitted); see also State v. Bottelson, 
102 Idaho 90, 92, 625 P.2d 1093, 1095 (1981) (“[T]o claim the protection of the fourth 
amendment, a person must show that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded 
place.”). The majority gets the cart before the horse and conditions its Fourth Amendment 
analysis on whether the defendant’s rights were violated, not whether the defendant held a 
reasonable expectation of privacy that society is willing to recognize as legitimate. I believe such 
an analytical paradigm is erroneous. 
At issue is whether Maxim had standing to challenge the search. Standing is simply 
“shorthand for the question [of] whether the [defendant] had a legitimate expectation 
of privacy in the area that was searched.”  Hoskins, 165 Idaho at 221, 443 P.3d at 235 (quoting 
Mann, 162 Idaho at 44 n. 1, 394 P.3d at 87 n. 1). Whether a defendant has an expectation of 
privacy is a two part inquiry. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979).  
The first [question] is whether the individual, by his conduct, has “exhibited an 
actual (subjective) expectation of privacy,”—whether . . . the individual has 
shown that “he seeks to preserve [something] as private.” The second question is 
whether the individual’s subjective expectation of privacy is “one that society is 
prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable,’ ”—whether . . . the individual’s 
expectation, viewed objectively, is “justifiable” under the circumstances. 
Id. (citing Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351–61 (1967) (internal citations omitted)).  
 
Probationers have a reduced expectation of privacy. United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 
112, 119 (2001) (“Inherent in the very nature of probation is that probationers do not enjoy the 
absolute liberty to which every citizen is entitled.”); State v. Gawron, 112 Idaho 841, 843, 736 
P.2d 1295, 1297 (1987) (“[S]uch persons conditionally released to societies have a reduced 
expectation of privacy, thereby rendering intrusions by government authorities ‘reasonable’ 
which otherwise would be unreasonable or invalid under traditional constitutional concepts.”). 
“Probation is simply one point . . . on a continuum of possible punishments ranging from solitary 
15 
confinement in a maximum-security facility to a few hours of mandatory community service.” 
Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 874 (1987). Many options lie between those two extremes 
like “probation—which can itself be more or less confining depending upon the number and 
severity of restrictions imposed.” Id. “[I]t is always true of probationers . . . that they do not 
enjoy ‘the absolute liberty to which every citizen is entitled, but only . . . conditional liberty 
properly dependent on observance of special [probation] restrictions.” Id. (quoting Morrissey v. 
Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 480 (1972)).  
Whether Maxim’s alleged privacy interest is “justifiable under the circumstances” is met 
with a “no” from me.  
[I]t must be remembered that the very assumption of the institution of probation is 
that the probationer is more likely than the ordinary citizen to violate the law. . . . 
The recidivism rate of probationers is significantly higher than the general crime 
rate. . . . And probationers have even more of an incentive to conceal their 
criminal activities and quickly dispose of incriminating evidence than the ordinary 
criminal because probationers are aware that they may be subject to supervision 
and face revocation of probation, and possible incarceration, in proceedings in 
which the trial rights of a jury and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, among other 
things, do not apply. . . .   
Knights, 534 U.S. at 120 (internal citations and quotations omitted).  
The scope of probation is determined by the terms of the probation agreement. See 
Jaskowski, 163 Idaho at 261, 409 P.3d at 841 (explaining that resolution of these cases depends 
on the specific language of the waiver at issue). In Gawron, for example, the police had 
performed a warrantless search of Gawron’s residence after learning Gawron was involved in 
multiple burglaries and it was revealed after a brief investigation that Gawron was on probation. 
Id. at 842, 736 P.2d at 1296. Gawron’s probation agreement read: 
That probationer does hereby agree and consent to the search of his person, 
automobile, real property, and any other property at any time and at any place by 
any law enforcement officer, peace officer, or probation officer, and does waive 
his constitutional right to be free from such searches.  
Id. (emphasis added). On appeal, Gawron argued the probation condition which required 
submission to warrantless searches was an unreasonable invasion of his Fourth Amendment 
rights. Id. This Court disagreed and held the reasonableness of the search need not be addressed 
because Gawron had expressly waived his constitutional right to be free from warrantless 
searches. Id. at 843, 736 P.2d at 1297. To compare, in Jaskowski an officer pulled Jaskowski 
over for an outstanding arrest warrant. Id. at 258, 409 P.3d at 838. Knowing Jaskowski was on 
16 
probation, the officer called his probation officer who later arrived at the stop. Id. The probation 
officer informed Jaskowski he would search the vehicle and then performed the search without 
Jaskowski’s permission. Id. The terms of Jaskowski’s probation agreement were: 
I shall submit and I agree to . . . warrantless searches of my person, personal 
property, electronic devices, automobiles, residence, and outbuildings at the 
request of my Probation Officer, by the Probation Officer, Peace Officer, and/or 
his designee; with or without Probable Cause; any time day or night. . . .  
Id. (emphasis added). This Court challenged the State’s expansive reading of Gawron that a 
probation condition on warrantless searches is always a complete waiver of Fourth Amendment 
rights, regardless of the actual language in the probation condition. Id. at 259, 409 P.3d at 839. 
Rather, this Court explained “[i]t is well settled that when the basis for a search is consent, the 
state must conform its search to the limitations placed upon the right granted by the consent.” Id. 
at 260, 409 P.3d at 840 (quoting State v. Turek, 150 Idaho 745, 749, 250 P.3d 796, 800 (Ct. App. 
2011)). This Court then held the warrantless search of Jaskowski’s vehicle exceeded the scope of 
his Fourth Amendment waiver because Jaskowski’s waiver “was conditioned upon the probation 
officer requesting to conduct a search and that any search conducted without such a prefatory 
request is not objectively reasonable.”  Id.  
The majority mistakenly reads our precedent in this arena as representing that a 
probationer’s waiver must at first be analyzed for its reasonableness under the Fourth 
Amendment. That said, our cases hold that the scope of a Fourth Amendment waiver depends on 
the terms of the probation agreement. This Court has not ignored the standing question in these 
types of cases, and our appellate courts have even allowed the issue to be raised for the first time 
on appeal. E.g., State v. Hanson, 142 Idaho 711, 718, 132 P.3d 468, 475 (Ct. App. 2006). Indeed, 
a court may find sua sponte that the defendant has not shown standing, no matter if the 
prosecutor brought this flaw to the court’s attention. See United States v. Nadler, 698 F.2d 995, 
998 (9th Cir.1983). 
Gawron and Jaskowski are just two examples of different points on the continuum of 
possible probation punishments. See Knights, 534 U.S. at 119. If a waiver includes limiting 
language such as the “at the request of” language employed in Jaskowski, then the scope of the 
waiver is less intrusive and the probationer reserves some expectation of privacy, albeit a limited 
one. On the other hand, if the waiver includes no limiting language such as the language in 
Gawron that waived all Fourth Amendment rights, the probationer has no reasonable expectation 
17 
of privacy. This is precisely the type of language that governs this case. See Samson v. 
California, 547 U.S. 843, 852 (2006) (quoting Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 477 (1972)  
(“[P]ertaining to petitioner’s status as a parolee, ‘an established variation on imprisonment,’ . . . 
including the plain terms of the parole search condition, we conclude that petitioner did not have 
an expectation of privacy that society would recognize as legitimate.”). 
I recognize the majority’s concern over the potential “evisceration” of the Fourth 
Amendment carries some weight. Yet given the recognized societal risk that probationers pose, I 
submit that probationers’ expectations of privacy are appropriately limited by the language 
employed in the waiver itself. See Jaskowski, 163 Idaho at 260, 409 P.3d at 840. The language in 
the waiver clause is broad for a reason, and it is not for this Court to rewrite it now under the 
guise of a reasonableness analysis. Indeed, if the majority harbors concerns about the breadth of 
the waiver clause, the better solution could be to challenge the voluntariness of such a waiver. 
See Gawron, 112 Idaho at 844, 736 P.3d at 1298 (Bistline, J., dissenting) (quoting State v. 
Fogarty, 610 P.2d 140 (Mont. 1980) (“A waiver theory however, does not comport with the 
requirements . . . that a waiver is invalid unless it be made knowingly, intelligently, and 
voluntarily. A choice cannot be termed voluntary where the alternative is prison and even more 
restrictions). That said, Maxim has not raised the voluntariness of his waiver on appeal, and thus 
that issue is not before us.  
The unstated truth is that the Fourth Amendment is alive and well for ordinary citizens 
who are not on probation for criminal behaviors which cause them to lose a panoply of 
constitutional rights. See Idaho Const. art. VI, § 3 (“No person is permitted to vote, serve as a 
juror, or hold any civil office who has, at any place, been convicted of a felony. . . .”); Idaho 
Code § 18-3316 (a person convicted of a felony loses their rights under the Second Amendment 
to keep and bear arms). Society as a whole has an interest that must be weighed in these 
equations. “In assessing the governmental interest side of the balance, it must be remembered 
that ‘the very assumption of the institution of probation’ is that the probationer ‘is more likely 
than the ordinary citizen to violate the law.’ ” Knights, 534 U.S. at 120 (quoting Griffin, 483 U.S. 
at 880). The majority’s basis for distinguishing this case from others where we have upheld the 
waiver–Gawron, Purdum and State v. Garnett, No. 45282, 2019 WL 2416953, at *2 (Idaho June 
10, 2019)—is that in those cases law enforcement  knew about the probationer’s status at the 
time of the search. My problem with relying on the officer’s knowledge or lack thereof as the 
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basis for a rule of constitutional law in cases like this one is that it wholly ignores the primary 
question whether the probationer had a reasonable expectation of privacy that society recognizes 
as legitimate in the first place. The potential evisceration of the Fourth Amendment is of no 
moment where the probationer has no such reasonable expectation of privacy to begin with. 
Based on the refined precedent of this Court, Maxim reserved no expectation of privacy 
when he waived all of his rights under the Fourth Amendment. Absent from the waiver is any 
limiting language such as the need to request to search that was present in Jaskowski. Maxim 
cannot create a subjective expectation of privacy when he explicitly waived his Fourth 
Amendment rights to search his property. Even assuming Maxim had a subjective expectation of 
privacy, to have standing Maxim must also show his expectation is “one that society is prepared 
to recognize as reasonable.” Maryland, 442 U.S. at 740. Society is not prepared to recognize a 
probationer’s subjective privacy belief where the probationer expressly waives all of his rights 
under the Fourth Amendment. See Samson, 547 U.S. at 852. Based on Maxim’s complete waiver 
of his Fourth Amendment rights, he has failed to show he has a reasonable expectation of 
privacy in his person or the place to be searched. Thus, he lacks standing to assert any rights 
under the Fourth Amendment. For that reason, I respectfully dissent.  
Justice BRODY concurs.