Arkansas Supreme Court Guts 4th Amendment: Allows Warrantless Searches of Homes on a Hunch

The Arkansas supreme court has decided that residents of their state who are family, friends and neighbors of offenders on probation or parole do not have 4th amendment rights in their homes if police merely suspect the offender is residing at their home. While parolees usually sign search waivers as a condition of their release that gives police the prerogative to search their person or property without probable cause or a warrant the conditions imposed on parolees and probationers are not incumbent on people they are associated with and may or may not reside with. For example, it wouldn’t be reasonable for the friends or parents of a probationer to be subject to random drug testing just because they are associated with someone who is; the same principle holds for the property of people associated with parolees and probationers. Hopefully, this completely unconstitutional ruling is overturned by a higher court. Several U.S. citizens had their rights violated by police using this same practice in other states which were all later deemed unconstitutional in court.