North Dakota v. Stenhoff
Annotate this CaseThe State appealed a district court order granting Shannon Stenhoff’s motion to suppress evidence. Stenhoff was sentenced to two years of supervised probation, the terms of which included a search clause. After allegedly violating the conditions of his probation, a petition to revoke Stenhoff’s probation was filed, and an order to apprehend was issued. A cursory officer safety search of a residence was conducted. According to testimony of a deputy, while the officers were there, a child residing there questioned if the officers were there for “the drugs and [alluded] to the presence of the illegal narcotics in the residence.” A deputy who conducted the search testified the child’s statement caused him to attempt to contact Stenhoff’s probation officer to notify him of the search for Stenhoff, but the probation officer did not answer the call. The deputy testified there were no narcotics in plain view. Based on the evidence seized during the probationary search, the State filed charges in February 2018. In May 2018, Stenhoff moved to suppress the evidence against him, claiming the warrantless probationary search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Following a suppression hearing, the district court granted Stenhoff’s motion to suppress, concluding the search was unreasonable and violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches, because law enforcement should have sought a warrant to search the residence. On appeal, the State argued the search at the residence where Stenhoff was arrested was reasonable because probationers have a lesser expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment, and the statements made to law enforcement by the child living at the residence regarding drugs provided reasonable suspicion of criminal activity at the residence. The North Dakota Supreme Court concluded after review that under the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable suspicion that drugs were in Stenhoff’s residence was supported by the child’s statement at the time Stenhoff was apprehended for a probation violation. The district court’s order granting Stenhoff’s motion to suppress evidence was reversed and remanded for further proceedings.
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