IN: Walking drug dog through house as a probation search was reasonable

Probation searches in Indiana can be by any law enforcement officer on reasonable suspicion, and defendant was on electronic monitoring at home. Such searches are always governed by reasonableness, and the court does not find it unreasonable to walk a drug dog through defendant’s home at a reasonable hour. The reasonable suspicion was a CI’s report that defendant was bragging about stealing marijuana. Shelton v. State, 2015 Ind. App. LEXIS 118 (February 27, 2015):

[20] We first note that there is a distinction “between the ‘reasonableness’ of a search under the Fourth Amendment and whether there was ‘reasonable suspicion’ to support a particular search.” Kopkey, 743 N.E.2d at 336. Notwithstanding the specific terms of a conditional release, all government searches must be reasonable. Schlechty, 926 N.E.2d at 6. As such, the Fourth Amendment would not support “the indiscriminate ransacking of a probationer’s home at all hours, or the pumping of his or her stomach, simply because a probation term included a search condition.” Id. at 6-7. Here, we find nothing unreasonable in the search of Shelton’s property. By escorting K-9 Dixie through the house and garage to sniff for the presence of illicit drugs, Officer Flanagan’s search was completed in a timely manner and was not overly intrusive. Thus, the issue before our court is whether there was reasonable suspicion to believe that Shelton had engaged in criminal activity.