Can a probation officer use a probation search condition to search the home of a third party for the purposes of obtaining an arrest warrant?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Woods, 21 Cal.4th 668, 88 Cal.Rptr.2d 88, 981 P.2d 1019 (Cal. 1999):

"A contrary conclusion--that the police, acting alone and in the absence of exigent circumstances, may decide when there is sufficient justification for searching the home of a third party for the subject of an arrest warrant--would create a significant potential for abuse.... [A]n arrest warrant may serve as the pretext for entering a home in which the police have a suspicion, but not probable cause to believe, that illegal activity is taking place. [Citation.]" (Steagald v. United States, supra, 451 U.S. at p. 215, 101 S.Ct. 1642.) The court noted that the Fourth Amendment "was intended partly to protect against the abuses of the general warrants that had occurred in England and of the writs of assistance used in the Colonies. [Citations.] ... The central objectionable feature of both warrants was that they provided no judicial check on the determination of the executing officials that the evidence available justified an intrusion into any particular home. [Citation.] An arrest warrant, to the extent that it is invoked as authority to enter the homes of third parties, suffers from the same infirmity." (Id. at p. 220, 101 S.Ct. 1642.) No principle of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence places an officer's reliance on a probation search condition solely to search the possessions of third parties on any firmer constitutional ground.

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