Fair enough. Can you find/cite the applicable law? tia
btw, Fontelle is reportedly not at the Carnation Dr house for months at a time. Based on that, if true, I doubt LE would be asking her permission at all...and most especially NOT as well in this case where the dots and crosses on the letters count.
ETA: I can see how the law as you reference might apply to an immediate situation, but not to one that occurred 3+ yrs ago.
~jmo~
I am not a lawyer or an expert of any sort.
The grounds for my speculation as to who could give consent to Bob's home being searched are based on my own experience as a property manager and on reading various sites on constitutional rights.
For instance, the following is talking about a co-tenancy situation but touches on a situation where one person who is present consents to a search while someone who is not present does not consent:
Miller: Yes sir, it does. Id like to add one final note here. And that is, what happens here if a consenting party is present and a potentially non-consenting party is absent? Do you have to go and find and ask the potentially non-consenting party before you can go inside? And, the Supreme Court here said no, so as long as there is no evidence that the police physically removed a potentially objecting party from the home for the sake of avoiding the objection. Then, the consent from one party should be sufficient.
http://www.fletc.gov/training/progr...can-consent-to-search-podcast-transcript.html
The following defines who has the right to consent to a search:
When consent is obtained through the deception of an undercover officer or an informer gaining admission without, of course, advising a suspect who he is, the Court has held that the suspect has simply assumed the risk that an invitee would betray him, and evidence obtained through the deception is admissible.
Additional issues arise in determining the validity of consent to search when consent is given not by the suspect but by a third party. In the earlier cases, third party consent was deemed sufficient if that party ''possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected.'' 85 Now, however, actual common authority over the premises is no longer required; it is enough if the searching officer had a reasonable but mistaken belief that the third party had common authority and could consent to the search.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/04.html
What I take from those sources is that the number of days per year spent on the premises doesn't really matter. What matters is that one person who would have a reasonable expectation of privacy and is in a position of authority over the premises gives consent.
Clearly Fontelle has some level of authority over the premises; the co-conservators could not, for example, choose to rent the house to someone else without Fontelle's consent or without a court order setting aside Fontelle's consent.
Fontelle also has an expectation to privacy in that house. She can, for instance, bathe there with the assumption that her bath will not be viewed by others.
Because Fontelle is living there, whoever might have a reason not to want the premises searched via HRD is assuming the risk that she will consent to a search.
As for the time in history that might be of interest in a search, I don't think that is relevant. A search is a search and if someone in a position to do so gives consent to a search, they're not just consenting to a search of the condition of the property as it exists in that moment in time. They are consenting to a search that may reveal evidence of a crime that happened 3 minutes ago, 3 hours ago, 3 weeks ago or 3 years ago.
Again, I am not a lawyer and I have no doubt that in this case, where the various factions are represented by actual lawyers, whoever was involved would consult their own lawyer.
It is merely my opinion that Fontelle, as the person who is living in the house and has a reasonable expectation of privacy while living there, is someone who can waive the fourth amendment right concerning searches.
