Court Opinion

ID: 9793050
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:41:20.283624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:03:09.532060
License: Public Domain

PETERS, J.
I dissent.
It is clear that the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment extends to probationers. (In re Martinez (1970) 1 Cal.3d 641, 647, fn. 6 [83 Cal.Rptr. 382, 463 P.2d 734]; People v. Rosales (1968) 68 Cal.2d 299 [66 Cal.Rptr. 1, 437 P.2d 489]; cf. Martin v. United States (4th Cir. 1950) 183 F.2d 436, 439.) The question is to what extent the state may deny or condition governmental benefits upon a waiver of Fourth Amendment rights. Our cases make clear that probationers may have a reduced right *767to Fourth Amendment protections, but that restrictions upon those rights must be narrowly drawn to meet needs for reformation and rehabilitation of the offender.
While the government is not totally barred from conditioning receipt of publicly conferred benefits upon a nonassertion of constitutional rights (Bagley v. Washington Township Hospital Dist. (1966) 65 Cal.2d 499, 505 [55 Cal.Rptr. 401, 421 P.2d 409]), it may not condition such benefits upon “any terms that it may choose to impose, . . (Vogel v. County of Los Angeles (1967) 68 Cal.2d 18, 21 [64 Cal.Rptr. 409, 434 P.2d 961].) Rather, the general rule is set forth in Parrish v. Civil Service Commission (1967) 66 Cal.2d 260, 271 [57 Cal.Rptr. 623, 425 P.2d 223]: “When ... the conditions annexed to the enjoyment of a publicly conferred benefit require a waiver of rights secured by the Constitution, however well-informed and voluntary that waiver, the governmental entity seeking to impose those conditions must establish: (1) that the conditions reasonably relate to the purposes sought by the legislation which confers the benefit; (2) that the value accruing to the public from imposition of those conditions manifestly outweighs any resulting impairment of constitutional rights; and (3) that there are available no alternative means less subversive of constitutional right, narrowly drawn so as to correlate more closely with the purposes contemplated by conferring the benefit. 5»
The Parrish rule is a limitation not only on legislative impairments on constitutional rights, but also on judicial and administrative impairments, and applies to persons granted conditional freedom, including parolees (People v. Hernandez (1964) 229 Cal.App.2d 143, 148 [40 CaL.Rptr. 100]) and probationers. (In re Allen (1969) 71 Cal.2d 388, 391 [78 Cal.Rptr. 207, 455 P.2d 143]; In re Mannino (1971) 14 Cal.App.3d 953, 967-969 [92 Cal.Rptr. 880].) Although courts at one time characterized conferral of public sector benefits as a matter of grace or privilege, unsusceptible to attack by those who sought the bénefit, it is now well settled that unconstitutional conditions of probation may be attacked. (In re Bushman (1970) 1 Cal.3d 767, 776 [83 Cal.Rptr. 375, 463 P.2d 727]; cf. Van Alstyne, The Demise of the Right-Privilege Distinction in Constitutional Law (1968) 81 Harv.L.Rev. 1439; Note, Parole Status and the Privilege Concept, 1969 Duke L.J. 139.)
Of course in construing the validity of probation conditions, we recognize that courts have broad discretion to impose “reasonable conditions . . . to the end that justice may be done . . . and specifically for the reformation and rehabilitation of the probationer.” (Pen. Code, § 1203.1, italics added; In re Bushman, supra, 1 Cal.3d 767, 776.) But what is rea*768sonable depends on the circumstances. Generally we have held that a condition of probation is invalid if it “requires or forbids conduct that is not reasonably related to future criminality.” (In re Bushman, supra, 1 Cal.3d 767, 777; People v. Dominguez (1967) 256 Cal.App.2d 623, 627 [64 Cal.Rptr. 290].) Where a condition of probation requires a waiver of precious constitutional rights, the condition must be narrowly drawn; to the extent it is overbroad it is not reasonably related to the compelling state interest in reformation and rehabilitation and is an unconstitutional restriction on the exercise of fundamental constitutional rights. (In re Mannino, supra, 14 Cal.App.3d 953, 967-969; cf. Parrish v. Civil Service Commission, supra, 66 Cal.2d 260, 271.) “A diminution of Fourth Amendment protection . . . can be justified only to the extent actually necessitated by the legitimate demands of the operation of the parole process . . . .” (In re Martinez, supra, 1 Cal.3d 641, 647, fn. 6; italics added.) A probationer may be entitled to a diminished expectation of privacy because of the necessities of the correctional system, but his expectation may be diminished only to the extent necessary for his reformation and rehabilitation.
Í cannot believe that such a total denial of Fourth Amendment rights is necessary or even desirable in rehabilitating a criminal offender. First, the proper level of surveillance and interference with personal rights is in part dictated by the gravity of the crime committed. Were the crime possession of beer by a 20-year-old minor (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 25658, subd. (b)), I frankly doubt whether the members of this court would con-; sider a total denial of Fourth Amendment rights “reasonable.” Yet the crime involved here—possession of marijuana—is rapidly becoming recognized as no greater a threat to the integrity of our social fabric. (See, e.g., Kaplan, Marijuana—The New Prohibition (1970); The San Francisco Committee on Crime, A Report on Non-Victim Crime in San-Francisco, Part III, Dangerous Drugs and Narcotics (1971).)
Even if possession of marijuana be deemed as dangerous as possession of more dangerous drugs, the proper authority for determining whether a probationer or parolee is obeying the terms of his conditional release is the probation or parole officer. It is this individual to whom the state has entrusted the ticklish task of guiding the released offender toward a law-abiding style of fife. The probation or parole officer is not just another faceless man in uniform; at best he is a trusted counselor and advisor as well as a firm but dispassionate disciplinarian. At the very least he is more aware of the necessity for surveillance in each individual case than are other law enforcement officers. The objective of deterring future criminal conduct by the probationer may in some cases justify surprise *769searches by the probation officer assigned to the individual’s case. I can see no justification, however, in subjecting the probationer to any search by any law enforcement officer at any time.
The majority appear to assert that prior consent to search by any law enforcement officer is necessary to the discovery of future offenses. We do not conditionally release a man because we wish to trap him in future offenses. Nor do we provide a probation officer for the purpose of being a one-man shadow of the probationer. Surely it is a proper purpose of the probation officer to ascertain whether the probationer is obeying all laws and the terms of his probation. But this function is undertaken with the goal of rehabilitating the offender. Law enforcement officers generally, on the other hand, do not have such goals in mind. It must be neither their role nor their prerogative to treat probationers as a specially suspect class of citizens. I can see no justification for extending the waiver of all Fourth Amendment rights to all law enforcement officers. I would hold the condition overbroad.
Moreover, there is no necessity for law enforcement officers to have such a privilege, given their lack of involvement in the rehabilitative process. Law enforcement officers investigating commission of a crime may properly question or search a probationer or parolee. And in considering the propriety of searches without warrants, one’s status as a probationer or parolee may be of weight in giving officers probable cause to search. (Martin v. United States, supra, 183 F.2d 436, 439; White, The Fourth Amendment Rights of Parolees and Probationers (1969) 31 U.Pitts.L.Rev. 167, 193-197; Note; Extending Search-and-Seizure Protection to Parolees in California (1969) 22 Stan.L.Rev. 129, 137-140.) It is simply not necessary in any way to effective law enforcement, much less to effective probation supervision, that all law enforcement officers be given the right to search probationers or parolees at any time for any reason.
There is also good reason to believe that such all-encompassing waivers of constitutional rights are not conducive to effective rehabilitation. Treatment of the probationer like a prisoner—stripped of all control over others’ knowledge of him because he is not deemed to have sufficient internal controls or knowledge of himself—simply weakens the will of the prisoner to behave responsibly because he thinks it right. While such treatment may be justified and necessary within prison walls, the function of probation is to strengthen independent judgment and internal controls, and to give the individual selective responsibility over his own actions. By completely denying him the right to privacy of his person, dwelling, and effects, the state thereby holds before the probationer a mirror image of *770himself as a person he should not trust. “Each search . . . chips away at the [individual’s] belief that he has an opportunity to grow as an individual with his own set of behavior controls. The rehabilitation process is, therefore, retarded by each such search . . . .” (Note, supra, 22 Stan.L.Rev. 129, 135.)
In Rosales and Martinez this court recognized that persons released conditionally into the mainstream of society have Fourth Amendment rights. We refused to permit the executive to extinguish those rights. Yet the majority now turn their back on these principles and would allow the judiciary to extinguish those rights. The majority rely on the manifest fiction that a probationer “consents” to the condition of his relief. “The rationale is not particularly appealing. It makes constitutional rights dépendent upon a kind of ‘contract’ in which one side has all the bargaining power . . . .” (People v. Hernandez, supra, 229 Cal.App.2d 143, 148.)1
The majority justify the total waiver on the ground that the probationer “ ‘will be less inclined to have narcotics or dangerous drugs in his possession .... Information obtained under such circumstances would afford a valuable measure of the effectiveness of the supervision given the defendant and his amenability to rehabilitation.’ (People v. Kern, 264 Cal.App.2d 962, 965 [71 Cal.Rptr. 105].)” Such searches measure the effectiveness of rehabilitation in the same manner that one fells a tree to measure its age. It is high time that we recognized that a person must have the freedom to be responsible if he is to become responsibly free.
I believe the condition of probation to be invalid. I would affirm the order of dismissal.
Tobriner, J., concurred.

 The fictional nature of the consent is made manifest by the majority’s immediate abandonment of the rationale. If the majority really relied on a “consent” rationale, surely they would hold that refusal to consent to the search would be grounds for probation revocation but would not validate the search undertaken here.