The News and Observer ran a story today about a piece of proposed legislation that would allow any law enforcement officer to search any probationer, for any reason, at any time. The story is here, and the proposed legislation itself is available here. In essence, it would remove G.S. 15A-1343(b1)(7), which gives judges the option of imposing, as a special condition of probation, a requirement that the probationer submit to warrantless searches by a probation officer "for purposes . . . reasonably related to [the probationer's] probation," and it would add a new standard condition of probation that would require all probationers to submit to warrantless searches by any law enforcement officer, without any limit as to the purpose of the searches. A professor quoted in the newspaper article questioned the constitutionality of the proposal, which got me thinking that this would be a good time to review the law regarding searches of probationers. There are two Supreme Court cases in this area. Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868 (1987), upheld the constitutionality of a Wisconsin regulation that permitted probation officers to search probationers' homes for supervisory purposes without a warrant and based only on reasonable suspicion. In the Court's view, requiring a warrant would be too cumbersome and would undermine probation officers' ability, and "special need," to supervise offenders. United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112 (2001), upheld a warrantless search of a probationer's residence that was supported only by reasonable suspicion, even though the search was conducted for investigative, [...]
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