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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
STATE OF ALASKA, )
) Court of Appeals No. A-5958
Petitioner, ) Trial Court No. 3PA-95-611 Cr
)
v. ) O P I N I O N
)
SHELTON L. LANDON, )
)
Respondent. ) [No. 1525 - April 18, 1997]
______________________________)
Petition for Review from the Superior Court,
Third Judicial District, Palmer, Natalie K.
Finn, Judge.
Appearances: Cynthia L. Herren, Assistant
Attorney General, Office of Special
Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Bruce
M. Botelho, Attorney General, Juneau, for
Petitioner. Vennie E. Nemecek, Assistant
Public Defender, Palmer, and John B. Salemi,
Public Defender, Anchorage, for Respondent.
Before: Bryner, Chief Judge, Mannheimer,
Judge, and Andrews, Superior Court Judge.
[Coats, Judge, not participating.]
MANNHEIMER, Judge.
Shelton L. Landon was convicted of fourth-degree
misconduct involving a controlled substance (running a marijuana
growing operation) and was sentenced to a 2-year term of
imprisonment. On February 23, 1995, Landon reported to the Mat-Su
Pretrial Correctional Facility to begin serving his sentence. Upon
Landon's arrival, prison officials searched the private belongings
that Landon had brought with him. During this search, the prison
officials removed the insoles of Landon's shoes and discovered
hollowed out compartments in the soles. Inside these compartments,
Landon had hidden packages of marijuana. Based on this discovery,
Landon was indicted for promoting contraband in the first degree
(smuggling a controlled substance into a correctional facility),
AS 11.56.375(a)(3).
In the superior court, Landon argued that the search of
his shoes was illegal. The superior court agreed and suppressed the
marijuana. The State has petitioned us to review this ruling.
The question presented is whether, in the absence of a
search warrant, prison officials are authorized to search the
private belongings of prisoners who are booked into a corrections
facility to begin serving their sentences. We hold that prison
officials are authorized to conduct such searches, and we therefore
reverse the ruling of the superior court.
Under both the Fourth Amendment to the United States
Constitution and Article I, Section 14 of the Alaska Constitution,
the scope of a person's right to be free of government-sponsored
search and seizure ultimately depends on the person's expectation
of privacy and the reasonableness of that expectation. Hudson v.
Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 524-25; 104 S.Ct. 3194, 3199; 82 L.Ed.2d 393,
402 (1984); State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872, 874-75 (Alaska 1978), on
reh'g, 596 P.2d 10 (Alaska 1979). Under federal law, a person who
has been committed to the custody of a corrections agency to serve
a prison sentence has little or no expectation of privacy in his
possessions. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. at 525-26, 529-530; 104
S.Ct. at 3200, 3201-02; 82 L.Ed.2d at 402-03, 404-05 (holding that
a prisoner has no expectation of privacy in the contents of his or
her cell); United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 237; 94 S.Ct.
467, 494; 38 L.Ed.2d 427, 441 (1973) (Powell, J., concurring) ("[A]n
individual lawfully subjected to a custodial arrest retains no
significant Fourth Amendment interest in the privacy of his
person."). In Landon's case, however, the superior court concluded
that the Alaska Constitution called for a different result.
The superior court's ruling hinged on the possibility that
Landon could have chosen to wear a pair of prison-issue shoes while
he served his sentence, and to place his own shoes in storage.
According to the evidence presented at the suppression hearing, all
prisoners who arrive to begin serving a sentence are given this
election (the choice of wearing their own shoes in prison or of
receiving a pair of prison-issue shoes). If prisoners choose to
wear prison-issue shoes, their own shoes are placed in storage at
the prison.
The prison authorities searched Landon's shoes shortly
after his arrival at the corrections facility, before he had made
the election of wearing his own shoes or prison-issue shoes. Thus,
there remained a possibility that Landon would choose to place his
shoes in storage rather than wear them in prison. Based on this
possibility, and based on the Alaska Supreme Court's decision in
Reeves v. State, 599 P.2d 727 (Alaska 1979), the superior court held
that Landon retained an expectation of privacy with regard to his
shoes.
In Reeves, the supreme court addressed the authority of
jail officers to search the person of an arrestee and to inventory
his or her possessions. The court held that an arrestee retains a
privacy interest in his or her property, and that this interest had
to be weighed against the jail guards' interest in preventing
weapons and/or contraband from being introduced into the jail. 599
P.2d at 734-35. The court balanced these interests by declaring:
[Jail authorities] may require internees to
surrender any possible repositories for
[weapons or contraband] prior to incarceration.
However, [while jail authorities enjoy] wide
authority to prohibit the entry of personal
belongings which may harbor forbidden
contents[, they have no] authority to conduct
a general exploratory search of the belongings
themselves [because, once] the internee has
turned over his possessions for safe keeping[,]
it is no longer possible that he may take them
into the jail.
Reeves, 599 P.2d at 735-36 (quoting State v. Kaluna, 520 P.2d 51,
61 (Haw. 1974)).
In Landon's case, the superior court ruled that the prison
authorities had no right to search Landon's shoes unless and until
Landon affirmatively chose to wear his own shoes in prison. The
superior court reasoned that if Landon availed himself of the
offered prison-issue shoes and placed his own shoes in storage, then
even if Landon's shoes contained contraband, that contraband would
not be introduced into the prison population, and so the prison
officials would have no justification for searching the shoes for
hidden contents.
We find ourselves in disagreement with the superior court.
The decision in Reeves turns on the fact that jail officials have
only a limited interest in searching the personal belongings of an
arrestee who may shortly post bail and depart. While the jail may
frequently become the involuntary bailee of arrestees' personal
property, this bailment is tempered by the knowledge that many
arrestees are only temporary residents of the jail; they will soon
leave and take their belongings with them. Thus, the Reeves court
held that jail officials' interest in an arrestee's property is
generally limited to insuring that the property stays isolated from
the jail population for the brief span of the arrestee's presence
in the facility.
Prison officials, on the other hand, have a significantly
greater interest in searching the personal belongings of a convicted
prisoner who is booked into the facility to begin serving his or her
sentence. Such prisoners are not temporary inhabitants of a
corrections facility; they will be housed there (or in another
facility designated by the commissioner of corrections) until the
expiration of their sentences. Thus, prison officials often become
long-term involuntary bailees of convicted prisoners' personal
belongings. In recognition of this fact, 22 AAC 05.035(a) requires
each correctional facility to "provide a secure area where a limited
amount of [each] prisoner's personal property may be stored".
Prison officials have an ongoing need to make sure that
weapons, contraband, and other prohibited items remain unavailable
to prisoners. Indeed, 22 AAC 05.067(c) authorizes prison officials
to strip-search a prisoner at the conclusion of any contact visit,
or whenever the prisoner returns from a classroom or any other area
where tools are present or in use, or whenever the prisoner returns
"from the grounds of a facility which are accessible for the
introduction of contraband, or other similar circumstances".
This last provision is relevant to Landon's case. Even
though a prisoner's stored belongings may not immediately be
introduced into the prison population, prisoners will from time to
time ask to inspect or retrieve their personal belongings. Whenever
prisoners gain access to their stored belongings, this raises a
renewed possibility that weapons, contraband, or other prohibited
items stored in those belongings will be introduced into the prison
population. Thus, prison officials have an ongoing interest in
making sure that a prisoner's stored personal belongings do not
contain weapons, contraband, or other prohibited items.
It would theoretically be possible for prison officials
to delay searching a prisoner's stored personal belongings until
each time the prisoner was actually given access to them. However,
the constitution requires only that a search be reasonable. The
question, then, is whether prison officials act reasonably when they
search all of a convicted prisoner's personal belongings at the time
the prisoner reports to serve his or her sentence, even though some
or all of those personal belongings may be placed in storage.
The constitutionality of the correctional facility's
search does not hinge on whether a different, arguably less
intrusive policy can be imagined. Rather, under Reeves, the
applicable standard is one of reasonable necessity. See Reeves, 599
P.2d at 737 ("The search of an arrestee's person should be no more
intensive than reasonably necessary to prevent the entry of weapons,
illegal drugs, and other contraband or potentially dangerous items
into the jail."). When a convicted -term storage at a correctional
facility where the prisoner may have occasional access to them, a
prompt search of those belongings is reasonably necessary to protect
against the entry of weapons and/or contraband into the correctional
facility. We therefore hold that the prison authorities were
empowered to search Landon's belongings þ not just to inventory
them, but to examine them for possible hidden weapons, contraband,
or other prohibited items.
The decision of the superior court is REVERSED, and this
case is remanded to the superior court for further proceedings on
the indictment.
