In re Curtis T.

Curtis T. (defendant) was a juvenile who signed a home-supervision agreement along with his mother after a petition was filed indicating that Curtis had possessed cocaine illegally. Home supervision enabled a juvenile who would be detained in a facility to stay home alternatively under the supervision of a probation officer or other representative pending the disposition of the juvenile’s court case. The agreement Curtis signed provided that Curtis’s probation officer must have access to Curtis and to his records of school attendance at all times. One Friday, Curtis’s probation officer called his home. Curtis’s mother answered and indicated that Curtis was not at home. Curtis’s absence from home violated the home-supervision agreement, and the probation officer told Curtis’s mother that she would come and take Curtis to juvenile hall in the morning. The next morning, two probation officers and two police officers went to Curtis’s home to arrest him. Curtis was asleep. Rather than waiting in the living room, the officers accompanied Curtis’s mother to his bedroom, where one of the officers noticed that Curtis had car-stereo equipment with wires cut to equal lengths in a pile on the floor. The officers examined the equipment, finding the serial numbers destroyed on two of the stereos. At a hearing, Curtis filed a motion to suppress the evidence of the equipment, arguing that the access condition in his home-supervision agreement did not give the officers a right to go into his bedroom or to search the stereo equipment. The motion to suppress was denied. Curtis admitted to possessing the car-stereo equipment in violation of the law and was ruled a ward of the court. Curtis appealed, arguing that the motion to suppress should not have been denied.