H
Herr Heckler Koch
Guest
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/157607165.html
2011 Judgment and order affirmed.
http://statecasefiles.justia.com/do...-of-appeals/2010ap002977-cr.pdf?ts=1323968862
The state Supreme Court is set to rule Friday on whether a sentencing judge essentially can eliminate a person’s Fourth Amendment rights by allowing police to search the person, their vehicle or residence for guns at any time and without probable cause or even suspicion.
The court got the case in July after the Court of Appeals certified it as "a novel issue of statewide importance that is certain to recur."
Tally Ann Rowan, 36, of Ellsworth crashed her car while intoxicated in 2008, then threatened to shoot emergency workers who arrived at the scene to help her and to kill a police officer’s family. At the hospital, she grabbed and injured a police officer’s thumb as he tried to restrain her so she could be medicated.
She had a gun in her car and also was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon.
Rowan was convicted at trial of battery to a law enforcement officer and sentenced to 14 months incarceration plus three years of extended supervision. One of the conditions of the supervision was that she, her house and her car could be searched any time by any law enforcement officer.
Rowan argued that the condition was unreasonable.
The state says it’s allowable under a “special needs” analysis, because the community needed extra protection from Rowan having a gun, and the judge believed the specter of a search any time would motivate her not to possess a firearm. Prosecutors cite a U.S. Supreme Court case that allowed California authorities to search parolees without suspicion, noting that parole is more like imprisonment than is probation.
Other novel conditions have been upheld in the past, including a person not have any more children until outstanding child support is paid, and that a man have no intimate or sexual relationships without approval of his probation agent.
But the appellate judges in Rowan’s case noted that those cases had ways to be resolved — pay up a debt or notify an agent — while Rowan would remain subject to search for the three years of supervision with no ability to escape the condition.
2011 Judgment and order affirmed.
http://statecasefiles.justia.com/do...-of-appeals/2010ap002977-cr.pdf?ts=1323968862
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