Opinion ID: 3166089
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reasonable Suspicion Principles

Text: Normally, law enforcement officers need a warrant supported by probable cause to search a suspect’s home. Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873, 107 S. Ct. 3164, 3168 (1987). However, there are exceptions to this requirement, including an exception for “special needs.” Id. The Supreme Court has held that a state’s operation of a probation system creates the type of “special needs” that “justify departures from the usual warrant and probable-cause requirements.” Id. at 873-74, 107 S. Ct. at 3168. The state has an interest in supervising probationers, id. at 874-75, 107 S. Ct. at 3168-69, and probationers have a reduced expectation of privacy, United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 119-21, 122 S. Ct. 587, 591-93 (2001). Balancing these interests and expectations, the Supreme Court has concluded that officers need “no more than reasonable suspicion to conduct a search of [a] probationer’s house” when the probationer is subject to a search condition. Knights, 534 U.S. at 121, 122 S. Ct. at 592-93. As probable cause is not necessary, it also follows that a warrant is not required. Id. at 121, 122 S. Ct. at 593. A search rests on reasonable suspicion when there is a “sufficiently high probability that criminal conduct is occurring to make the intrusion on the individual’s privacy interest reasonable.” Id. Based on the totality of the 10 Case: 15-12098 Date Filed: 12/29/2015 Page: 11 of 18 circumstances, law enforcement must have “a particularized and objective basis for suspecting legal wrongdoing.” United States v. Yuknavich, 419 F.3d 1302, 1311 (11th Cir. 2005) (quotation marks omitted). The officers must “be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). A “hunch” or “unparticularized suspicion” is insufficient. Id. (quotation marks omitted).