Court Opinion

ID: 9803828
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 16:06:10.722134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:03:29.394121
License: Public Domain

*958LUMPKIN, Judge:
specially concurring.
T1 I concur in the Court's decision to affirm the Judgment and Sentence in this case but write separately to address the following.
12 First, I note that this Court interprets Article II, § 30 of the Oklahoma Constitution the same as the Supreme Court interprets the Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. State v. Sittingdown, 2010 OK CR 22, ¶ 17, 240 P.3d 714, 718; State v. McNeal, 2000 OK CR 13, ¶10, 6 P.3d 1055, 1057. Both provisions contain almost the exact same wording, and in substance are identical. MceNeal, 2000 OK CR 13, §10, 6 P.3d at 1057; Long v. State, 1985 OK CR 119, ¶6, 706 P.2d 915, 917. The touchstone of these constitutional provisions is reasonableness. See Randolph v. State, 2010 OK CR 2, ¶19, 231 P.3d 672, 679.
1 3 Second, both Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 126 S.Ct. 2198, 165 L.Ed.2d 250 (2006), and the present case involve parolees.
[Plarolees are on the "continuum" of state-imposed punishments. United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 119, 122 S.Ct. 587, 591, 151 L.Ed.2d 497 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). On this continuum, parolees have fewer expectations of privacy than probationers, because parole is more akin to imprisonment than probation is to imprisonment. As this Court has pointed out, "parole is an established variation on imprisonment of convicted criminals.... The essence of parole is release from prison, before the completion of sentence, on the condition that the prisoner abide by certain rules during the balance of the sentence." Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 477, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 2598, 88 LEd.2d 484 (1972). "In most cases, the State is willing to extend parole only because it is able to condition it upon compliance with certain requirements." Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 857, 365, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 2021, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998). See also United States v. Reyes, 283 F.3d 446, 461 (C.A2 2002) ("[Flederal supervised release, ... in contrast to probation, is meted out in addition to, not in lieu of, incarceration" (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Cardona, 908 F.2d 60, 63 (C.A.1 1990) ("[O]n the Court's continuum of possible punishments, parole is the stronger medicine; ergo, parolees enjoy even less of the average citizen's absolute liberty than do probationers" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)).
Id., 547 U.S. at 850, 126 S.Ct. at 2198 (citations corrected). Thus, the United States Supreme Court determined that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit a police officer from conducting a suspicionless search of a parolee subject to a valid search condition of his parole. Id., 547 U.S. at 856, 126 S.Ct. at 2202. In reaching this determination, the Supreme Court left intact its holding in Knights that "[wlhen an officer has reasonable suspicion that a probationer subject to a search condition is engaged in criminal activity, there is enough likelihood that criminal conduct is occurring that an intrusion on the probationer's significantly diminished privacy interests is reasonable." Id., 547 U.S. at 849, 126 S.Ct. at 2198, quoting Knights, 534 U.S. at 121, 122 S.Ct. at 593. Law enforcement officers must keep these two differing circumstances in mind.