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Friday, December 07, 2007
Ind. Decisions - More on: Where is D.L. v. State of Indiana?
D.L. v. State is now accessible via the Court's list of COA decisions granted today.
In D.L. v. State, a must read 14-page opinion, Judge Bradford writes:
In this case of first impression, we balance the privacy rights of students and citizens against our schools’ need to identify individuals on school property in this post-Columbine world. More specifically, we are asked to determine whether a school police officer may conduct a pat-down search of a student on school grounds for the sole purpose of finding the student’s identification card if he fails to produce it when asked to do so. Balancing the student’s rights against the interests of school safety, we conclude that a pat-down search for identification of a student on school grounds when the student fails to produce such identification does not violate the student’s rights against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. * * *Having found that the search in this case was reasonable at its inception and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances justifying it, we hereby decline D.L.’s claim that the juvenile court abused its discretion in admitting the evidence at his denial hearing. The judgment of the juvenile court is affirmed.
NAJAM, J., concurs.
BAKER, C.J., concurs with opinion. [including this statement] I write separately to further comment on the application of the T.L.O. test announced in Myers v. State, 839 N.E.2d 1154, 1160 (Ind. 2005), which involves student searches that are conducted by school resource officers.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 7, 2007 04:27 PM
Posted to Ind. App.Ct. Decisions