116
Opinion of the Court
Knights was arrested, and a federal grand jury subsequently indicted him for conspiracy to commit arson, for possession of an unregistered destructive device, and for being a felon in possession of ammunition. Knights moved to suppress the evidence obtained during the search of his apartment. The District Court held that Detective Hancock had "reasonable suspicion" to believe that Knights was involved with incendiary materials. App. to Pet. for Cert. 30a. The District Court nonetheless granted the motion to suppress on the ground that the search was for "investiga-tory" rather than "probationary" purposes. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. 219 F. 3d 1138 (2000). The Court of Appeals relied on its earlier decisions holding that the search condition in Knights' probation order "must be seen as limited to probation searches, and must stop short of investigation searches." Id., at 1142-1143 (citing United States v. Ooley, 116 F. 3d 370, 371 (CA9 1997)).
The Supreme Court of California has rejected this distinction and upheld searches pursuant to the California probation condition "whether the purpose of the search is to monitor the probationer or to serve some other law enforcement purpose." People v. Woods, 21 Cal. 4th 668, 681, 981 P. 2d 1019, 1027 (1999), cert. denied, 529 U. S. 1023 (2000). We granted certiorari, 532 U. S. 1018 (2001), to assess the constitutionality of searches made pursuant to this common California probation condition.
Certainly nothing in the condition of probation suggests that it was confined to searches bearing upon probationary status and nothing more. The search condition provides that Knights will submit to a search "by any probation officer or law enforcement officer" and does not mention anything about purpose. App. 49. The question then is whether the Fourth Amendment limits searches pursuant to this probation condition to those with a "probationary" purpose.
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007