What is a Search? Flashcards
Katz v. U.S. (S. Ct. 1967) (The petitioner, Katz (the “petitioner”), was convicted of transmitting wagering information over telephone lines in violation of federal law. The government had entered into evidence the petitioner’s end of telephone conversations that the government had obtained by placing a listening device to the phone booth that the petitioner used.)
The protection of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution (”Constitution”), against unreasonable searches and seizures, follows the person and not the place.
U.S. v. White (S. Ct. 1971) (Government authorities, through the use of an informant, secretly recorded conversations with the Respondent, James A. White (the “Respondent”). The informant was not present during the trial, but the recorded conversations were admitted.)
The secret simultaneous (electronic) recording of conversations between an individual and government agents, without a warrant, does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Oliver v. U.S. (S. Ct. 1984) ( Police officers found a marijuana field growing about a mile away from an individual’s home.)
“[A]n individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home.”
California v. Greenwood (S. Ct. 1988) (The respondent, Greenwood, was arrested for narcotics trafficking based upon evidence obtained as a result of a police search of his trash.)
An expectation of privacy does not give rise to Fourth Amendment constitutional protection unless society is prepared to accept that expectation as objectively reasonable.
Kyllo v. U.S. (S. Ct. 2001) (The police obtained evidence of a marijuana growing operation inside the defendant, Kyllo’s (the “defendant”) home, by using a thermal imaging device from outside the home. The police used the device to gather evidence to support issuance of a search warrant for the home.)
The use of a device by the government, which is not generally used by the public, to obtain evidence from inside a home is a presumptively unreasonable search without a warrant under the Fourth Amendment
U.S. v. Jones (S. Ct. 2012)(Based on information gathered through various investigative techniques, police were granted a warrant authorizing use of a GPS tracking device on the Jeep registered to Jones’ wife (of which Jones was the exclusive driver), but failed to comply with the warrant’s deadline. Officials nevertheless installed the device on the undercarriage of the Jeep and used it to track the vehicle’s movements. By satellite, the device established the vehicle’s location within 50 to 100 feet and communicated the location by cell phone to a government computer, relaying more than 2,000 pages of data over a 28-day period.)
But as we have discussed, the Katz reasonable expectation of privacy test has been added to , not substituted for , the common-law trespassory test. The situations involving merely the transmission of electronic signals without trespass would remain subject to Katz analysis. When “the Government obtains information by physically intruding” on persons, houses, papers, or effects, “a ‘search’ within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment” has “undoubtedly occurred.”
Florida v. Jardines (S. Ct. 2013)(dog sniffs at front door)
A dog sniff at the front door of a house where the police suspected drugs were being grown constitutes a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment
A seizure of a person occurs when:
in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave, though he does not feel the same restrictions that accompany an arrest.
In situations in which the suspects movement is retrained for reasons other than police presence (e.g., on a Greyhound bus), the re question becomes: would a reasonable person have felt able to terminate the encounter?
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Test:
(1) The defendant has manifested a subjective expectation of privacy, (2) that expectation is one that society accepts as objectively reasonable. Physical trespass is relevant to the balancing test, though not dispositive.
An intrusion on a reasonable expectation of privacy is a search, but it is not necessarily an unreasonable search. It is unreasonable when:
it is done without a warrant and no exception applies.
