## Facts

- Frank Piazzola and Terrance Marinshaw were students living in dormitory rooms at Troy State University.
- University officials and local police met about alleged drug activity on campus, with state narcotics agents and student informers involved.
- Police later told the university’s Dean of Men they believed marijuana was located in specified dorm rooms and sought the university’s cooperation to search.
- The Dean accompanied law enforcement officers to the dormitory and assisted in searching particular student rooms, including those of Piazzola and Marinshaw.
- The searches were conducted without warrants and without the students’ consent.
- Officers found marijuana in the rooms; the parties stipulated this marijuana was the only evidence used to convict the students of illegal possession of marijuana in Alabama state court.
- After state appellate proceedings ended without substantive review of the suppression claim, the prisoners sought federal habeas relief, which the district court granted based on a Fourth Amendment violation.

## Issues

1. Whether the petitioners satisfied 28 U.S.C. § 2254’s exhaustion requirement despite a procedural deficiency in their state appeals.
2. Whether a warrantless, nonconsensual search of a university dormitory room by police, conducted with university cooperation and justified by a dormitory inspection regulation, violates the Fourth Amendment.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed the grant of habeas corpus.
- The court held the petitioners had exhausted available state remedies; their failure to provide a transcript in state appellate proceedings did not amount to a deliberate bypass barring federal review.
- The court held the dorm-room searches violated the Fourth Amendment because they were police-driven criminal searches conducted without warrants or consent and could not be justified by a university inspection rule.
- Because the marijuana was the only evidence supporting the convictions, the unconstitutional searches required habeas relief.

## Legal Principles

- A state prisoner is not barred from federal habeas review for failure to comply with a state appellate procedural requirement absent an intentional, knowing bypass of state procedures and where no realistic further state remedy remains.
- College students have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their dormitory rooms comparable to other residential occupants.
- A university’s dormitory inspection regulation permits entry for institutional purposes but does not authorize or supply consent for warrantless police searches aimed at gathering evidence for criminal prosecution.
- When law enforcement is the moving force and the purpose is criminal enforcement, ordinary Fourth Amendment requirements apply unless a recognized exception is shown.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit upheld habeas relief because the state convictions rested solely on marijuana seized during warrantless, nonconsensual, police-initiated dormitory searches that could not be validated by a university inspection policy, and it concluded the petitioners had sufficiently exhausted state remedies for federal habeas purposes.


Piazzola v. Watkins, 442 F.2d 284 (5th Cir. 1971)