UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 07-5050
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JOHN WILLIAM PICKENS,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern
District of West Virginia, at Clarksburg. Irene M. Keeley,
District Judge. (1:07-cr-00032-IMK-1)
Submitted: September 26, 2008 Decided: October 6, 2008
Before WILKINSON and NIEMEYER, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON,
Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
L. Richard Walker, Assistant Federal Public Defender,
Clarksburg, West Virginia, for Appellant. Sharon L. Potter,
United States Attorney, Zelda E. Wesley, Assistant United States
Attorney, Clarksburg, West Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Following a jury trial, John William Pickens was
convicted of possession of firearms by a convicted felon, in
violation of 18 U.S.C.A. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2) (West 2000 &
Supp. 2008). The district court sentenced Pickens to fifty-five
months in prison. Pickens timely appeals, challenging the
district court’s denial of his motion to suppress the firearms
seized during a warrantless search of his home. We affirm.
Pickens asserts that the district court erred by
denying his motion to suppress the rifles seized from his
trailer, claiming he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in
his residence and that the district court erroneously concluded
that he consented to the search. The factual findings
underlying a motion to suppress are reviewed for clear error,
while the legal determinations are reviewed de novo. United
States v. Wilson, 484 F.3d 267, 280 (4th Cir. 2007) (citing
Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996)). When the
district court denies a suppression motion, this court reviews
the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government.
United States v. Uzenski, 434 F.3d 690, 704 (4th Cir. 2006).
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches;
a warrantless search is per se unreasonable unless it falls
within a valid exception to the warrant requirement.
Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 219 (1973). Voluntary
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consent to a search is such an exception. Ferguson v. City of
Charleston, 308 F.3d 380, 396 (4th Cir. 2002).
In addition, individuals under supervision have
diminished rights under the Fourth Amendment. United States v.
Reyes, 283 F.3d 446, 458 (2d Cir. 2002). For example, a
probation officer’s warrantless visit to the home of a convicted
person serving a term of supervised release does not violate the
Fourth Amendment, even absent consent. Griffin v. Wisconsin,
483 U.S. 868, 878 (1987).
The Supreme Court addressed the diminished rights
accorded individuals under court supervision in United States v.
Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 120-21 (2001). In Knights, a police
officer conducted a warrantless search of a defendant he knew
was on probation. The defendant had agreed to warrantless
searches of his home by probation officers as a condition of his
release. Without deciding whether such prior consent
constituted a complete waiver of the defendant’s Fourth
Amendment rights, id. at 118, the Supreme Court found that the
search was valid because the defendant had a diminished right to
privacy based on his status as a probationer and the officers
had reasonable suspicion that Knights was engaging in criminal
activity. Id. at 120-21.
The Supreme Court visited the issue of a parolee’s
Fourth Amendment rights in Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843
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(2006), examining “whether a condition of release can so
diminish or eliminate a released prisoner’s reasonable
expectation of privacy that a suspicionless search by a law
enforcement officer would not offend the Fourth Amendment.” Id.
at 847. In upholding the suspicionless search of a parolee on a
public street, the Court noted that parole was “an established
variation on imprisonment,” id. at 852, and that “parolees have
fewer expectations of privacy than probationers, because parole
is more akin to imprisonment than probation is to imprisonment.”
Id. at 850. The Court examined the totality of the
circumstances, balancing the degree to which the search intruded
upon the parolee’s diminished expectation of privacy against the
Government’s “overwhelming interest” in supervising parolees to
prevent recidivism and promote reintegration into society. Id.
at 848-54. The Court noted that the parolee was aware of the
California law conditioning release on the parolee’s consent to
warrantless searches as indicated by his signature on an order
submitting to the condition. Id. at 852. Under the totality of
the circumstances, the Court held that a suspicionless,
warrantless search of the parolee did not violate the Fourth
Amendment. Id. at 857.
With these principles in mind, we find that the
warrantless search of Pickens’ trailer did not violate the
Fourth Amendment. Like the parolee in Sampson, Pickens had
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signed a parole agreement acknowledging he would comply with all
rules and regulations prescribed by the Commissioner of the West
Virginia Division of Corrections. Pickens signed a copy of the
rules and regulations which included the provisions requiring
him to permit his parole officer to visit his residence without
obstruction and to submit to a warrantless search of his person
and home for supervision purposes at any time. Under the
totality of the circumstances, considering Pickens’ undisputed
awareness of the parole rules and regulations requiring him to
submit to a warrantless search and his agreement to abide by
these provisions as a condition of parole, and balancing
Pickens’ diminished expectation of privacy by virtue of his
status as a parolee against the State’s legitimate interest in
supervising parolees, we conclude that the warrantless search of
Pickens’ home did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
For these reasons, we affirm Pickens’ conviction. We
dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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