Opinion ID: 1454001
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Warrantless Search of the Defendant's Apartment

Text: State v. Velasquez, 672 P.2d 1254 (Utah 1983), defined a parolee's Fourth Amendment rights. It held that a parole officer may conduct a lawful search of a parolee's apartment without a search warrant if the parole officer has reasonable grounds for investigating whether a parolee has violated the terms of his parole or committed a crime. Id. at 1260. It is necessary that a parole officer have an articulable reasonable suspicion, which requires no more than that the authority acting be able to point to specific and articulable facts that, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant a belief in the conclusion mooted  in this instance, that a condition of parole has been or is being violated. Id. at 1260 n. 5 quoting United States v. Scott, 678 F.2d 32, 35 (5th Cir.1982). Thus, to constitute a valid warrantless search, there must be evidence (1) that the parole officer has a reasonable suspicion that the parolee has committed a parole violation or crime, and (2) that the search is reasonably related to the parole officer's duty. Id. at 1260. In the instant case, Officer Shepard was aware that Johnson had committed a parole violation by pawning a stereo. But more significant is the fact that Shepard knew that a warrant had been issued based on probable cause that authorized the arrest of Johnson for the forgery of checks. Those facts provided the basis for an articulable suspicion that Johnson had both committed a crime and violated the terms of his parole. In this case, it is of no consequence that Officer Shepard took no action to search Johnson's quarters until Detective Jones told Officer Shepard of the arrest warrant. Furthermore, Shepard told Mrs. Morashita that he was searching for stolen checks. Johnson claims that the police used Officer Shepard to evade the necessity of obtaining a warrant. Although we have warned that police officers may not use parole officers simply as a means of avoiding the warrant requirements to conduct random searches, [1] that does not mean that police officers and parole officers are precluded from cooperating when the police have obtained an arrest warrant for the parolee. A parole officer has a legitimate parole interest to pursue in conducting a search when he becomes aware that an arrest warrant has issued for a parolee whom he supervises. In Velasquez, this Court stated that a parole officer's search of a parolee's premises is not unlawful just because it is also beneficial to the police. Id. at 1262. That does not, however, sanction unlimited complicity between parole officers and police. [2] The parole officer had a reasonable and articulable basis for conducting a parole search when he learned that probable cause existed to believe that Johnson had committed forgery. The parole search was supervised and conducted by the parole officer, not by Detective Jones. See, e.g., United States ex rel Santos v. New York State Bd. of Parole, 441 F.2d 1216, 1218 (2nd Cir.1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 1025, 92 S.Ct. 692, 30 L.Ed.2d 676 (1972) (The mere fact that the police officer was the first to suspect that appellant was engaged in criminal activity and related this fact to the parole officer and was present at the subsequent investigation in no way alters the legality of the parole officer's presence.) The testimony of Jones and Shepard support the trial judge's finding that there was no evidence of bad faith on the part of the police and the parole officers. Consequently, there was nothing improper either in the decision to conduct the warrantless search or in the joint effort between Shepard and Jones.