delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Chief Justice Kilbride and Justices Thomas, Garman, Karmeier, Burke, and Theis concurred in the judgment and opinion.
OPINION
Following a stipulated bench trial, the circuit court of St. Clair County convicted defendant, Samuel Absher, of unauthorized possession of a controlled substance (720 ILCS 570/402(c) (West 2002)). The appellate court reversed. No. 5 — 04—0729 (unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23). We granted the State’s petition for leave to appeal and now reverse the judgment of the appellate court.
I. BACKGROUND
On March 18, 2004, pursuаnt to a fully negotiated guilty plea, defendant was convicted in the circuit court of St. Clair County of retail theft. In exchange for his plea, defendant was placed on probation for a period of two years. The agreement provided that defendant was to serve the first year in accordance with St. Clair County’s “Intensive Probation Supervision” program, followed by a second year of “standard” probation. During the period of “intensive” probation, defendant agreed to abide by а number of conditions in addition to the general probation restrictions. The probation order stated, in relevant part:
“9. *** [Y]ou shall further obey and comply with such other reasonable rules and regulations as are defined in article #10.
10. SPECIFIC RULES AND REGULATIONS OF INTENSIVE PROBATION SUPERVISION:
* * *
(c) submit to searches of your person, residence, papers, automobile and/or effects at any time such requests are made by the Probation Officer, and consent to the use of anything seized as evidence in Court proceedings.”
On May 17, 2004, a St. Clair County prоbation department officer — assisted by officers from the Belleville police department — searched defendant’s residence pursuant to this probation condition and discovered cocaine and marijuana. Defendant was thereafter charged with one count of felony unauthorized possession of a controlled substance (720 ILCS 570/402(c) (West 2002)). 1
Prior to trial, defendant filed a motion to suppress the evidence recovered from his residence. Defendant contended that although he agreed to the suspicionless search condition contained in article 10(c) of the probation order, the search nevertheless violated his right to privacy in his residence because it was not based upon reasonable suspicion and he had not consented to the officers’ entry.
At the suppression hearing, St. Clair County probation officer E.J. Jarvis testified that on March 18, 2004, he met with defendant and explained to him the conditions of his probation, including the provision cоntained in article 10(c) allowing suspicionless searches of defendant’s residence. Jarvis stated that defendant posed no questions regarding the agreement as a whole nor with respect to any specific provision prior to signing it. In relation to Jarvis’ testimony, defense counsel stipulated that there was no dispute that defendant had knowingly and voluntarily agreed to the intensive probation conditions.
George Chester, the supervisor of the intensive probation program at the St. Clair Cоunty probation department, testified to observing defendant on May 17, 2004, when defendant visited the probation office for a regularly scheduled meeting. Defendant’s conduct led Chester to suspect that defendant may have been under the influence of drugs. Based upon this observation, combined with a review of defendant’s file, Chester believed that defendant “was in possession of a controlled substance at his residence.” Pursuant to the search condition contained in article 10(c) of defendant’s probation order, Chester contacted the State’s Attorney’s office and obtained authorization to search defendant’s home. Chester then arranged for officers from the Belleville police department to accompany a probation officer in executing the search of defendant’s residence later that evening.
St. Clair County Probation Officer Burdett Rice testified that Chester instructed him to search defendant’s home loiter that evening. Rice and officers from the Belleville police department arrived at defendant’s residence at approximately 10 p.m. Rice knocked on the door and informed defendant that the officers were there to perform a “routine search.” Defendant replied, “no, you are not tonight,” and tried to close the door. Rice prevented defendant from closing the door, and forced entry into defendant’s home. The officers secured defendant and searched the premises, recovering а bag of crack cocaine, a bag of marijuana, and several lighters and pipes.
In denying defendant’s suppression motion, the circuit court observed that “defendant cannot, at his convenience and perhaps because he is in an untenable position, make a declaration that he revokes a term of his probation.” The terms of the probation agreement, combined with the testimony of Chester, rendered the search reasonable.
Thereafter, a stipulated bench trial was conducted, and defendant was found guilty of unauthorized possession of a controlled substance (720 ILCS 570/402(c) (West 2002)), and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
The appellate court reversed. No. 5 — 04—0729 (unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23). Relying upon our decision in People v. Lampitok,
The State filed a petition for leave to appeal to this court. Although we denied the State’s petition, we directed the appellate court, pursuant to our supervisory authority, to vacate its order and reconsider its ruling in light of People v. Wilson,
We granted the State’s petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S. Ct. R. 315(a) (eff. Aug. 15, 2006).
II. ANALYSIS
When reviewing a circuit court’s ruling on a motion to suppress evidence, that ruling is assessed under the two-part test adopted by the Supreme Court in Ornelas v. United States,
The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution guards the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const., amend. IV; accord Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, §6. A “search” occurs when “an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed.” United States v. Jacobsen,
The Supreme Court, however, has set forth limited exceptions to the warrant requirement. For example, consent has long been an exception to the need for a search warrant. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte,
The State contends that because defendant, as part of a fully negotiated guilty plea, freely agreed to the suspicionless search condition contained in article 10(c) of his probation order, he thereby knowingly waived his rights under the fourth amendment to challenge the reasonableness of any search conducted in accordance with this provision. Although the State acknowledges that Lampitok hеld that the specific probation search condition in that case did not constitute such a waiver, it asserts that applying that holding under these facts provides defendant with the benefit of the bargain, i.e., serving a term of probation rather than imprisonment, but strips the State of the benefit that made probation rather than imprisonment a mutually advantageous option: its ability to closely supervise defendant to ensure successful completion of his probation period and the need tо protect the public while defendant is on probation. Accordingly, the State requests that we revisit this issue, and adopt the holding of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Barnett,
The facts in Barnett mirror those in the instant appeal. Barnett, similar tо defendant, pled guilty to criminal offenses in the circuit court of St. Clair County. United States v. Barnett, No. 03 — CR—30170,
The United States district court rejected Barnett’s arguments. Instead, the cоurt agreed with the government that, by accepting the terms of intensive probation supervision as part of his fully negotiated guilty plea, Barnett voluntarily and knowingly waived his fourth amendment rights in exchange for not having to serve time in prison. Id. at *7-11. Accordingly, the district court denied Barnett’s suppression motion.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The court first noted that the Supreme Court has made it clear that where a probationer accepts a broad probation condition — such as in the matter at bar — he therefore has a significantly diminished expectation of privacy. Barnett,
Barnett grounded this holding in its observation that plea bargains are a form of contract, and “like other contracts are presumed to make both parties better off and do no harm to third parties.” Id. at 692. The court explained the benefits reaped by both Barnett and the State as a result of their agreement:
“Barnett didn’t want to go to prison. He preferred to sacrifice the limited privacy to which he would have been entitled *** just as convicted defendants prefer home confinement to confinement in a jail or prison even if the home confinement involved monitoring the defendant’s activities inside the home and thus invades his privacy. And since imprisonment is a greater invasion of personal privacy than being exposed to searches of one’s home on demand, the bargain that Barnett struck was not only advantageous to him but actually more protective of Fourth Amendment values than the alternative of prison would have been. It was also advantageous to the government, which wouldn’t have agreed to it otherwise. ***
*** Nothing is more common than an individual’s consenting to a search that would otherwise violate the Fourth Amendment, thinking that he will be better off than he would be standing on his rights. Often a big part of the value of a right is what one can get in exchange for giving it up. Here, given the alternative facing him of a prison sentence, Barnett gave up nothing.” (Emphasis in original.) Id. at 691-92.
The court also rejected Barnett’s contention that enforcing a blanket consent invites abuse on the part of law enforcement, stating that this not only ignores the even greater deprivation of privacy Barnett faced if he were to be imprisoned, but also that because a plea bargain is a contract, it contains implicit terms which necessarily prevent absurd results. The court found that the purpose of the waiver “was not to permit probation officers to harass probationers, but to excuse the officers from having to justify a search by establishing that it was based on probable cause, suspicion, or some other standard that might invite litigation,” and that it is reasonable to assume that “the ‘contract’ implicitly forbids — equivalently, the waiver of Fourth Amendment rights does not extend to — searches that have no possible law-enforcement objective, or that so far exceed any legitimate enforcement needs as to compel an inference that the purpose and only effect were harassment.” Id. at 692. Accordingly, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Barnett’s suppression motion.
Barnett’s contract law analysis and conclusion is supported by our own precedent. Beginning with our 1996 decision in People v. Evans,
We find this case to be analogous to Evans and, therefore, similarly governed by principles of contract law. Here, defendant and the Stаte entered into a fully negotiated plea agreement in which defendant pled guilty to a charge in exchange for the State’s recommendation of a specific sentence: two years’ probation, with the first year being “intensive.” Faced with the possibility of imprisonment and a complete loss of freedom and privacy rights, defendant opted to avoid incarceration and agree to probation, including a year of the more restrictive “intensive” version and its greater invasion of privacy. This bargain was advantageous to defendant, as he avoided jail time and gave up nothing by agreeing to probation and its restrictions. The bargain was also advantageous to the State, in that it assured that defendant was required to comply with the more restrictive conditions of intensive probation for the first year. It is undisputed that the agreement was explained to defendant, he understood its provisions and he freely signed the form.
Defendant’s actions in subsequently challenging the validity of the search of his home conducted pursuant to article 10(c) of his probation agreement are analogous to those of a defendant who enters into a fully negotiated guilty plea and thereafter seeks to unilaterally reduce his sentence by filing a motion for reconsideration without withdrawing the plea. In both instances, the defendant wishes to hold the State to its part of the bargain while not adhering to his own part of the agreement, thereby raising the specter of gamesmanshiр similar to that discussed in Evans. Just as the specific sentence and plea went “hand in hand” as material elements of the plea bargain in Evans, so, too, did the plea and the conditions of probation at issue here.
Defendant, in his brief, does not address Barnett substantively, but asks that we adhere to our position in Lampitok that the probationer’s agreement in that case to a warrantless search condition did not constitute prospective consent.
We find Lampitok to be factually distinguishable from this case. First, we note the significant differences between the probation condition at issue there and the condition agreed to by defendant at bar. In Lampitok, the probationer was subject to a probation order which provided that she “shall submit to a search of her person, residence, or automobile at any time as directed by her Probation Officer to verify compliance with the conditions of this Probation Order.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Lampitok,
In contrast, the language used in defendant’s probation order is far more restrictive with regards to defendant’s conduct, and far more restrictive with rеspect to its scope. Defendant is required to “obey and comply” with the “rules and regulations of intensive probation supervision,” including that he “[s]ubmit to searches of [his] person, residence, papers, automobile and/or effects at any time such requests are made by the Probation Officer, and consent to the use of anything seized as evidence in court proceedings.” Unlike in Lampitok where we held that the search condition “affirmatively required [the] probation officer to ask [the probationer’s] consent” to a search limited to verify her compliance with conditions of her probation (id. at 262), here, defendant has agreed to obey and comply with any search conducted by a probation officer, and has also explicitly provided “consent” to the use of anything seized during such search as evidence in court proceedings. It is clear that defendant’s search condition implicates far more than only the probation revocation disсussed in Lampitok. Accordingly, the search conditions set forth in these cases are factually distinguishable.
Lampitok is further distinguishable to the extent that, unlike here, defendant Lampitok was not the probationer subject to the search condition. Instead, Lampitok was an acquaintance who occupied a motel room with the probationer at the time probation officers searched the premises, and who was arrested as a result of the discovery of drugs and weapons. Id. at 235-37. Finally, we also note that Lampitok preceded Barnett, and, therefore, we did not have the benefit of its analysis at the time of that decision.
Thus, we have not had prior occasion to answer the question squarely presented in this appeal. Because Barnett not only addresses identical facts to those in the case at bar, but also mirrors our own precedent establishing that contract principles govern a fully negotiated guilty plea, we find Barnett persuasive. In addition, wе believe that on these facts this approach also promotes the dual purpose of the probation system: the rehabilitation of the probationer and the protection of the public. Griffin v. Wisconsin,
Because we find that defendant waived his fourth amеndment rights by freely agreeing to the suspicionless search condition set forth in article 10(c) of his probation order, we need not address the remainder of the State’s arguments in support of its position that the search was valid.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the judgment of the appellate court and affirm the judgment of the circuit court.
Appellate court judgment reversed; circuit court judgment affirmed.
Notes
Defendant was also charged with one count of misdemeanor possession of cannabis (720 ILCS 550/4(c) (West 2002)). This charge was later dismissed by the State.
What was referred to as “parole” in Illinois prior to February 1, 1978, is now termed “mandatory supervised release” (MSR). 730 ILCS 5/5 — 8—1(d) (West 2006); see also Wilson,
We contrasted the negotiated plea at issue with an “open” plea, in which a defendant pleads guilty without receiving any promises from the State in return. Evans,
We note that this case does not present the situation where a defendant was involuntarily placed on probation, required to submit to conditions imposed by the sentencing judge, or had no option to refuse the conditions. Our decision today is limited to the specific facts presented, and we express no opinion with respect to other factual situations.