The justices on the Supreme Court are being asked to rein in a scheme for police searches of homes – without warrants – that uses the “suspicion” that a person on probation or parole lives there.
Officials with the Rutherford Institute are warning that if the decision from the Arkansas Supreme Court in Bailey v. Arkansas is allowed to stand, the results would be “a slippery slope that allows police to carry out warrantless searches in violation of the Fourth Amendment when police merely suspect but do not know or have probable cause to believe that a probationer lives on the premises.”
John W. Whitehead, chief of the institute, explained, “This case isn’t just about one search in Arkansas. It’s about a creeping erosion of our Fourth Amendment rights that threatens every homeowner in America.
“We’re on a slippery slope towards a society where police can invade any home based on nothing more than a hunch. It’s an affront to the Constitution and a danger to us all,” he said.
The institute explained that under state law in Arkansas, people on supervised probation or parole must accept a waiver that allows “any law enforcement officer to conduct a warrantless search of their person, residence, electronic device, or motor vehicle at any time, day or night, whenever requested by the law enforcement officer, and the search does not need to be based on an articulable suspicion that the person is committing or has committed a new criminal offense.”
The institute noted millions of people across the nation are subject to similar state requirements.
Problems arise, however, when “police officers mistakenly suspect that a probationer who has waived his Fourth Amendment rights is living at another’s residence, and then use that waiver as justification to search the home without a warrant or any indication of criminal activity.”
That means that the law imposes the loss of constitutional rights to be protected from unwarranted searches on those individuals, even if the probationer is not living there and may not have even been there.
The institute said it is warning the high court that “relatives and friends will then lose their right to security in their homes.”
Highlighted for the court are cases in which police shot and killed a homeowner’s dog, when officers drew their guns in front of children, and traumatized a parolee’s mother who was hospitalized.
