Title: Logan v. Commonwealth
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 072342
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: September 12, 2008

Present:  Hassell, C.J., Keenan, Koontz, Lemons, and Goodwyn, 
JJ., and Stephenson and Russell, S.JJ. 
 
JAMES GREGORY LOGAN 
 
 
 
OPINION BY 
v. Record No. 072342  SENIOR JUSTICE ROSCOE B. STEPHENSON, JR. 
 
 
 
September 12, 2008 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the Court 
of Appeals erred in holding that the exclusionary rule never 
applies to evidence submitted in probation revocation 
proceedings, regardless of the searching officer's conduct or 
bad faith. 
I 
 
The facts relevant to the issue presented are not in 
dispute.  In 2002, James Gregory Logan was convicted of 
selling cocaine as an accommodation under Code § 18.2-248(D).  
He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, with three years 
and seven months suspended upon condition that he be of good 
behavior for three years and six months from the date of his 
release from probation.  On August 22, 2003, Logan, while on 
probation, was arrested for possession of cocaine.  He was 
convicted and appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals, 
contending that the search and seizure that yielded the 
contraband had violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment 
to the United States Constitution.  The Court of Appeals, 
sitting en banc, reversed Logan's conviction on Fourth 
Amendment grounds, Logan v. Commonwealth, 47 Va. App. 168, 
173, 622 S.E.2d 771, 773 (2005), and the Commonwealth did not 
appeal that decision. 
 
The Commonwealth then sought to have Logan's probation 
revoked because he had violated the requirement that he be of 
good behavior.  The Commonwealth argued that Logan's conduct 
in possessing cocaine while on probation was proved and that 
the exclusionary rule did not apply at a probation revocation 
hearing.  Logan argued that the evidence obtained as a result 
of an unlawful search and seizure should be excluded from the 
probation revocation hearing because the police officer who 
made the warrantless search and seizure had acted in bad 
faith. 
 
At the probation revocation hearing, Danville police 
officer Jerry Lee Pace, Jr. testified that he saw a man whom 
he thought was wanted for a felony.  Officer Pace followed the 
man into a rooming house and up the stairs where he saw the 
man and a woman on the landing.  The man, who possessed a 
piece of crack cocaine, was Logan.  Logan was not the wanted 
felon. 
 
The trial court conducting the probation revocation 
hearing found that the police officer had not acted in bad 
faith and that the evidence obtained from the officer's search 
 
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and seizure should not be excluded.  The court, therefore, 
revoked Logan's probation.  Logan filed an appeal with the 
Court of Appeals. 
II 
 
In the Court of Appeals, Logan contended, as he had done 
in the trial court, that the evidence obtained by Officer Pace 
should have been suppressed because the officer, in entering 
the rooming house, had acted in bad faith.  The Court of 
Appeals did not consider Logan's bad-faith argument, finding 
irrelevant the question whether the officer had acted in bad 
faith and holding that the exclusionary rule never applies in 
a probation revocation proceeding.  Logan v. Commonwealth, 50 
Va. App. 518, 524, 651 S.E.2d 403, 406 (2007). 
 
This holding by the Court of Appeals is contrary to 
Anderson v. Commonwealth, 251 Va. 437, 440, 470 S.E.2d 862, 
863 (1996), in which we held that "the exclusionary rule is 
not applicable in a probation revocation proceeding absent a 
showing of bad faith on the part of the police."  (Emphasis 
added.)  The Court of Appeals ruled that the United States 
Supreme Court, in Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation & Parole v. 
Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 364 (1998), had nullified any reason to 
apply the exclusionary rule in a probation revocation 
proceeding, irrespective of the circumstances that led to the 
discovery of the evidence.  Logan, 50 Va. App. at 523-24, 651 
 
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S.E.2d at 405.  The Court of Appeals, by rejecting the 
possible application of the "bad faith" exception, therefore 
found that Scott had overruled Anderson by implication.  The 
Court of Appeals found that it was "governed by the principles 
set forth in Scott" and "constrained to find that the 
exclusionary rule does not apply to probation revocation 
hearings."  Id. at 524, 651 S.E.2d at 406. 
 
We conclude that the Court of Appeals' reliance on Scott 
is misplaced based upon three relevant distinctions between 
Scott and the present case.  First, Scott involved a parolee,  
rather than a probationer, 524 U.S. at 360, and parolees "have 
fewer expectations of privacy than probationers, because 
parole is more akin to imprisonment than probation is to 
imprisonment," Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 850 (2006).  
Second, the parolee in Scott had explicitly consented to a 
search of the house and his person as a condition of parole.  
524 U.S. at 360.  Third, a parole revocation hearing is an 
administrative proceeding, and "[a]pplication of the 
exclusionary rule would . . . alter the traditionally 
flexible, administrative nature of parole revocation 
proceedings."  Id. at 364.  Therefore, we reaffirm our holding 
in Anderson and rule that the Court of Appeals erred in 
holding that the exclusionary rule never applies in probation 
 
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revocation proceedings and in failing to consider Logan's bad-
faith argument. 
III 
 
Accordingly, we will reverse the judgment of the Court of 
Appeals and remand the case to the Court of Appeals for a 
review of Logan's challenge to the trial court's determination 
that the police officer's actions did not constitute bad 
faith. 
Reversed and remanded.