Under Your Radar: TN Supreme Court Rules that 4th Amendment Does Not Apply to Parolees

From WSMV:

A precedent-setting ruling from the state Supreme Court has determined the Fourth Amendment right isn't for everybody.

The ruling now gives Tennessee law enforcement officials more authority to conduct searches of the 61,000 Tennesseans on probation or parole. They can do it at any time, without reason, and without a warrant.

“I think it will be a better way to keep a handle of parolees and probationers,” said Nashville attorney Worrick Robinson.

You can view the decision of the majority here.

Sharon Lee was the lone dissenter:

I respectfully disagree with the majority. In my view, the police officers’ search of Ms. Turner’s residence without reasonable or individualized suspicion violates article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution. While the United States Supreme Court has ruled in Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843 (2006), that such a search, without reasonable or individualized suspicion, does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, I would hold the Tennessee Constitution provides a greater degree of protection against suspicionless searches than does the federal Constitution.

Here's the text of the Article I, Section 7 of the TN Constitution:

[T]he people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures; and that general warrants, whereby an officer may be commanded to search suspected places, without evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, whose offences are not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty and ought not to be granted.

UPDATE: So I investigated a little bit to see if there have been any similar cases concerning the rights of parolees and the 4th Amendment.

In Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868 (1987), a probationer's home was searched by probation officers, accompanied by police, without consent, without a warrant, and without the semblance of probable cause. A handgun was found and introduced in evidence over objection at Griffin's felony trial.

The Supreme Court upheld the search as "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment, stressing that the search was conducted under a state regulation authorizing probation officers to search a probationer's home when there were "reasonable grounds" to believe there was contraband in the home.