CA9: Suspicionless mandatory supervision search, without more, is reasonable (on rehearing)

United States v. Cervantes, 859 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. June 19, 2017) (posted here) had a new opinion issued on rehearing, United States v. Cervantes, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 18017 (9th Cir. Sept. 11, 2017), coming to the same result on the probation search issue.

Summary by the court:

The panel held that for Fourth Amendment purposes, mandatory supervision is more akin to parole than probation, and that the search was authorized under the search condition because the officers had probable cause to believe that the hotel room constituted “premises” under the defendant’s control. Rejecting the defendant’s contention that the officers violated California’s prohibition against arbitrary, capricious, or harassing searches, the panel noted that, without something more, a suspicionless search is lawful if authorized by a parolee’s search condition. Concluding that no Fourth Amendment violation was shown, the panel held that the district court properly denied the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence found in his hotel room.

The panel held that the defendant had adequate notice of a suspicionless search condition of supervised release imposed in connection with his federal sentence, and that the facts of the case justified the district court’s belief that the condition would be necessary to mitigate the exceptionally high risk that the defendant would re-offend during his term of supervised release.