Court Opinion

ID: 9678219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:14:39.354542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:02.780917
License: Public Domain

DYKMAN, J.
(dissenting). The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The fourth amendment does not contain an escape clause for warrantless searches of probationers’ homes, nor does it suggest that the term “probable cause” may be interpreted to mean “hunch” or “guess.” There is no constitutional language suggesting a difference between parole officers and police.1 The prohibition is against *203unreasonable searches, and a prescribed quantum of evidence is required for the search.
The United States Supreme Court has recently said:
It is axiomatic that “the physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” And a principal protection against unnecessary instrusions into private dwellings is the warrant requirement imposed by the Fourth Amendment on agents of the government who seek to enter the home for purposes of search or arrest. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Court has recognized, as “a ‘basic principle of Fourth Amendment law[,]’ that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.”
Consistently with these long-recognized principles, the Court decided in Payton v. New York, supra, that war-rantless felony arrests in the home are prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, absent probable cause and exigent circumstances. [Citations and footnotes omitted.]
Welsh v. Wisconsin, - U.S. -, -, 80 L. Ed. 2d 732, 742-43 (1984).
Welsh was an “exigent circumstances” not a “probable cause” case. Still, the court quoted Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948), for the rule that forcible entry into homes may be made only with a search warrant:
*204In Johnson, Justice Jackson eloquently explained the warrant requirement in the context of a home search:
“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. . . . The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is ... a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent.”
Welsh at -, 80 L. Ed. 2d at 742, n. 10.
In Thompson v. Louisiana, - U.S. -, -, 83 L. Ed. 2d 246, 250 (1984), reh’g denied, - U.S. -, 83 L. Ed. 2d 983 (1985), the court reiterated the warrant requirement, and listed the exceptions to that requirement :
In a long line of cases, this Court has stressed that “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576, 88 S. Ct. 507 (1967) (footnotes omitted). This was not a principle freshly coined for the occasion in Katz, but rather represented this Court's long-standing understanding of the relationship between the two clauses of the Fourth Amendment. See Katz supra, at 357 n 18 and 19, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576, 88 S. Ct. 507. Since the time of Katz, this Court has recognized the existence of additional exceptions. See, e.g., Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594, 69 L. Ed. 2d 262, 101 S. Ct. 2534 (1981); United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 49 L. Ed. 2d 116, 96 S. Ct. 3074 (1976); South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 49 L. Ed. 2d *2051000, 96 S. Ct. 3092 (1976). However, we have consistently reaffirmed our understanding that in all cases outside the exceptions to the warrant requirement the Fourth Amendment requires the interposition of a neutral and detached magistrate between the police and the “persons, houses, papers and effects” of the citizen. [Footnote omitted.]
In New Jersey v. T.L.O., - U.S. -,-, 83 L. Ed. 2d 720 (1985), the court also recognized a “school setting” exception to the fourth amendment’s warrant requirement.
None of the exceptions listed in Thompson and T.L.O. suggest that the majority’s exception for probationers exist. The Supreme Court refers to “a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions.” Thompson, supra,, - U.S. -, -, 83 L. Ed. 2d at 250. If exceptions must be specifically established and well delineated, a state court of appeals statement that the lack of a “probationer” exception need not deter it from creating one is difficult to accept. Given the Supreme Court’s forceful language concerning exceptions in fourth amendment cases, I would leave it to that court to determine whether a “probationer” exception exists.
Even accepting the majority’s conclusion that a war-rantless search of a probationer’s dwelling may be made with reasonable grounds to believe the dwelling contains contraband, those grounds do not exist in this case.
The facts surrounding the search are more extensive than the majority suggests. The probation officer testified that he could not recall which police officer told him of the existence or possible existence of defendant’s gun, though he thought it was Officer Pittner. Officer Pittner did not recall telling the probation officer that defendant possessed a gun.
We cannot tell whether the unknown police officer told the probation officer that defendant had a gun or possibly had a gun — the probation officer testified to *206both. We cannot tell whether the unknown police officer’s belief was founded on a hunch, informant information, rumor or imagination. Without knowing where information comes from, no one can form a conclusion, let alone a reasonable conclusion, that the information meets the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard adopted by the majority. In reality, the majority’s standard is merely whether a possibility exists that a probationer possesses a gun. This amounts to license for police to break into any probationer’s home at any time for any or no reason.
Probationers may achieve their status as a result of convictions for disorderly conduct, drunk driving, or fish and game law violations, as well as by being convicted of a major felony. Making all probationers’ homes subject to forcible searches by the police for little if any reason results in the very evil the fourth amendment was designed to prevent. Probationers’ guns and drugs are readily seized through the use of warrants or existing warrant exceptions. We do not need the one adopted by the majority.

 The majority finds it significant that a parole officer rather than a police officer searched defendant’s residence. This distinction is not relevant to a fourth amendment analysis. In New Jersey v. T.L.O., - U.S. -, -, 83 L. Ed. 2d 720, 730 (1985), the court said:
It may well be true that the evil toward which the Fourth Amendment was primarily directed was the resurrection of the pre-Revolutionary practice of using general warrants or “writs of assistance” to authorize searches for contraband by officers of the Crown. See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 7-8, 53 L. Ed. 2d 538, 97 S. Ct. 2476 (1977); Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 624-629, 29 L. Ed. 746, 6 S. Ct. 524 (1886). [T]his Court has never limited the Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures to operations conducted by the police. Rather, the Court has long spoken of the Fourth Amendment’s strictures as restraints imposed upon “governmental action” — that is, “upon the activities of sovereign authority.” Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 475, 65 L. Ed. 1048, 41 S. Ct. 574, 13 A.L.R. 1159 (1921). Accordingly, we have held the *203Fourth Amendment applicable to the activities of civil as well as criminal authorities: building inspectors, see Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 18 L. Ed. 2d 930, 87 S. Ct. 1727 (1967), OSHA inspectors, see Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 312-313, 66 L. Ed. 2d 305, 98 S. Ct. 1816 (1978), and even firemen entering privately owned premises to battle a fire, see Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 506, 56 L. Ed. 2d 486, 98 S. Ct. 1942 (1978), are all subject to the restraints imposed by the Fourth Amendment. As we observed in Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, “[t]he basic purpose of this Amendment, as recognized in countless decisions of this Court, is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.” 387 U.S., at 628, 18 L. Ild. 2d 930, 87 S. Ct. 1727.