Kopkey v. State
| Decision Date | 29 January 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 66A04-0005-CR-220.,66A04-0005-CR-220. |
| Citation | 743 N.E.2d 331 |
| Parties | Timothy KOPKEY, Appellant-Defendant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff. |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
Daniel S. Tankersley, Winamac, IN, Attorney for Appellant.
Karen Freeman-Wilson, Attorney General of Indiana, Adam M. Dulik, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
Timothy Kopkey appeals from a judgment revoking his in-home detention and probation and ordering his subsequent incarceration in the Pulaski County Jail to serve the remainder of his sentence. We affirm.
Kopkey presents three issues for review, which we restate as:
I. whether the trial court properly denied his motion to suppress the results of two urine tests, which indicated he had recently used cocaine and which formed the basis of the State's petition to revoke his in-home detention and probation;
II. whether the trial court properly revoked his probation prospectively when the sentencing order indicated that Kopkey's actual probation would not begin until after completion of the in-home detention period; and
III. whether the trial court possessed authority to revoke his in-home detention and order him incarcerated in the Pulaski County Jail because the sentencing order itself did not clearly state that the in-home detention was either a direct placement in a community corrections program or a condition of probation.
The State originally charged Kopkey by indictment in September 1996 with two counts of child molesting, two counts of sexual battery, two counts of criminal confinement, and one count of battery. Following plea negotiations, the State filed an amended indictment on January 12, 1998, charging Kopkey with two counts of criminal confinement as Class D felonies and two counts of battery as Class A misdemeanors. The trial court accepted Kopkey's guilty plea and sentenced him on February 19, 1998, in accordance with the plea agreement, ordering in pertinent part:
The Court also finds that:
Record pp. 35-36. On May 19, 1999, the trial court corrected the sentencing order pursuant to Indiana Trial Rule 60(A), substituting "Pulaski County Jail" for "Indiana Department of Correction" in the second paragraph quoted above. We previously affirmed the trial court's action in an unpublished memorandum decision, holding that it merely rendered the entirety of the order consistent and embodied the parties' intentions. Kopkey v. State, No. 66A03-9910-CR-383, 725 N.E.2d 535 (Ind.Ct.App. February 29, 2000), slip op. pp. 5-6. Kopkey served twenty-one months on work release and then, based upon his two-for-one good time credit, was placed on in-home detention.
The terms of Kopkey's in-home detention and probation agreements, which were attached as exhibits to the plea agreement, provided in part that he would not possess or consume any controlled substances not prescribed by a physician. The in-home detention agreement also provided that Kopkey would submit to random testing for alcohol or illegal drug use whenever requested by a member of the Cass County In-Home Detention Department staff.1 One such staff member visited Kopkey at his residence on November 28, 1999, and obtained a urine sample that tested positive for cocaine. Another staff member visited Kopkey on January 1, 2000, and Kopkey again produced a urine sample that tested positive for cocaine.
Based on these drug tests the State petitioned to revoke Kopkey's probation and in-home detention placement. In response, Kopkey moved to suppress the results of the urine screens. After conducting a hearing, the trial court entered an order on February 29, 2000, denying Kopkey's motion to suppress and revoking his in-home detention placement and probation and requiring him to serve the remainder of his in-home detention and probation periods, a total of 1529 days or a little over four years, in the Pulaski County Jail. This appeal ensued.
Kopkey's first contention is that the trial court erroneously denied his motion to suppress the laboratory results of the chemical analysis of the two urine samples obtained by the community corrections officers that revealed Kopkey had recently ingested cocaine. He claims that the samples were obtained at random and without reasonable suspicion in violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution,2 asserting that the following two provisions in his in-home detention agreement were impermissibly overbroad waivers of those rights:
9. ... You voluntarily waive your fourth (4th) amendment rights, and while placed on In-Home Detention you agree to submit to a search of your person, residence, motor vehicle, or any location where personal property may be found, in order to enforce the conditions of In-Home Detention pertaining to alcohol, drugs, or firearms....
* * * * * *
14. (a) You agree to submit to random testing for alcoholic beverages or illegal drugs at any time when requested by the In-Home Detention Staff....
Record pp. 31-32. A review of the record confirms there was no indication or reason to suspect Kopkey had recently used illegal drugs or alcohol at the time the two drug tests were administered.
In Green v. State, 719 N.E.2d 426 (Ind. Ct.App.1999), another panel of this court held that "a condition of work release that purports to require a participant to submit to a search or seizure without reasonable suspicion is overly broad." Id. at 430. This holding was based upon our observation in an earlier case that "[w]e ... affirm the importance of a reasonableness limitation on a probationer's consent to waive his Fourth Amendment rights in a probation agreement." Purdy v. State, 708 N.E.2d 20, 23 (Ind.Ct.App.1999). This statement, in turn, was based upon a separate concurrence in Rivera v. State, 667 N.E.2d 764 (Ind.Ct.App.1996), trans. denied, where the author concluded that a condition of probation requiring the probationer to submit to a search without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing is overly broad and violates the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 767-68. We do not believe this analysis controls the present case.
First, we observe that the Green holding is based indirectly upon the Rivera concurrence, which was a view that did not command a majority vote in that case. Rather, the Rivera majority, we believe correctly, focused primarily on the probationer's voluntary consent to warrantless searches as part of his probation agreement. The published Rivera opinion concerned the defendant's conviction on various drug charges, but we observed in a footnote that we had recently upheld, in an unpublished opinion, the defendant's probation revocation based upon a positive drug screen. Rivera, 667 N.E.2d at 766 n. 1
(emphasis added). We also stated that "[t]he record affirmatively supports the conclusion that Rivera had agreed to submit to searches as a condition of his probation in order to be released from prison." Id. at 767.
There is no indication in the present case and Kopkey makes no claim that his consent to submit to random drug testing was procured by fraud, duress, fear, or intimidation, or was merely a submission to the supremacy of the law, which would be necessary to render such consent invalid. See Rivera, 667 N.E.2d at 766.
Second, we note that the work release agreement at issue in Green purported to waive the inmate's "4th Amendment right with regard to a search and seizure by any law enforcement officer." Green, 719 N.E.2d at 429. While the probation agreement in Purdy was not made part of the record on appeal, it also apparently contained a blanket waiver of the probationer's Fourth Amendment rights. Purdy, 708 N.E.2d at 23-24. Here, we focus our analysis on the more specific paragraph fourteen of Kopkey's in-home detention agreement, relating solely to random drug testing, rather than the more general paragraph nine that resembles the blanket waivers in Green and Purdy. We thus limit our holding in this case to the constitutional validity of paragraph fourteen.
Next, we believe that a distinction must be made between the "reasonableness" of a search under the Fourth Amendment and whether there was "reasonable suspicion" to support a particular search, as the two terms convey different concepts and may be improperly interchanged. "Reasonable suspicion" is a less demanding standard than probable cause and requires a showing considerably less than preponderance of the evidence, but it still requires at least a minimal level of objective justification and more than an inchoate and...
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