## Facts

- Sergeant George Roberts, an Air Force enlisted member, lived in squadron barracks while assigned to a unit that handled explosive substances.
- The squadron commander received information that about 21 of roughly 60 members were suspected of illegal drug use, and two members were caught with drugs at their duty stations.
- At approximately 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday, the commander ordered a unit-wide “shakedown inspection” of the barracks, using a drug-detection dog and handlers.
- The inspection was conducted without individualized suspicion of Roberts and was described as aimed at finding drugs.
- Inspectors entered Roberts’s room, detected an odor associated with marijuana, and the dog alerted to a cabinet; marijuana was found inside the cabinet.
- Roberts was charged and convicted at a general court-martial of wrongful possession of marijuana; his sentence included four months of hard labor and a bad-conduct discharge.
- The Air Force Court of Military Review affirmed, and Roberts sought further review.

## Issues

1. Whether a commander’s pre-dawn, unit-wide barracks “inspection” using a drug-detection dog, conducted without individualized probable cause and aimed at locating drugs, was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment requiring suppression of marijuana found in a servicemember’s room.

## Decision

- The Court of Military Appeals affirmed the lower military appellate court and upheld the conviction.
- The court treated the barracks event as a permissible command inspection, not an unconstitutional search requiring individualized probable cause for each room.
- The marijuana seized from Roberts’s cabinet was admissible.
- A dissent argued the event resembled a general criminal search lacking probable cause.

## Legal Principles

- In the military, Fourth Amendment reasonableness is evaluated in light of command responsibilities for safety, discipline, and readiness, including heightened concerns in units handling dangerous materials.
- A unit-wide, non-selective inspection of military living quarters may be lawful even if it is expected to uncover contraband, so long as it is not a pretext to target particular individuals for criminal investigation without proper cause.
- Servicemembers generally have a reduced expectation of privacy in barracks compared to civilian homes, and inspections of quarters are a recognized incident of military life.
- Use of a drug-detection dog during a command inspection may be reasonable when employed as part of a broad, unit-wide inspection rather than as a targeted evidentiary search.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a commander-ordered, unit-wide barracks drug inspection as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment given military safety and discipline needs, and it allowed the government to use marijuana found during the inspection to support Roberts’s conviction.


United States v. Roberts, 2 M.J. 31 (C.M.A. 1976)