Minimally invasive warrantless search

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In United States Constitutional Law, a minimally intrusive/invasive warrantless search is a type of search that does not breach the boundaries of the property and is performed without any prerequisite search warrant. These searches are contested regularly in courts, and have been ruled for and against under different circumstances. The primary debate concerns the method in which the search is conducted, and also the area being searched. Issues concerning warrantless search and subsequent seizure are always of local concern, because they are a community law enforcement issue as well as a national law issue.

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Debate centers on whether the home holds special legal sanctity against warrantless search, unlike an automobile. Automobiles stopped on public roads can be searched without warrants because the searched party is still on public property. Warrantless searches can also be performed in public buildings, such as museums and airports. However, because the home is the private property of the owner, homes have different protections against warrantless searches. The United States Supreme Court has addressed these issues in a number of cases.

Katz v. United States

In Katz v. United States , 389 U.S. 347 (1967), electronic eavesdropping devices attached to the outside of a phonebooth or a home were deemed to violate the unreasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, because the interior private life of the homeowners was exposed along with information about illegal activity. Overruling Olmstead v. United States and Goldman v. United States , the Court ruled that this minimally intrusive bugging for the purpose of exposing illegal activity was unconstitutional, because it intruded on private civilian life. [1] This is precedence for protecting civilians against minimally invasive means of exposing criminal activity.

Kyllo v. United States

In Kyllo v. United States , 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Court held that the use of a thermal imaging device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home to identify home drug cultivation was deemed unconstitutional, because in addition to exposing illegal activity without a warrant, the privacy of the home was compromised. This case specifically highlights this duality: the right to privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the denial of right to contraband as a concept enmeshed in the concept of rule of law.

Illinois v. Caballes

In Illinois v. Caballes , 543 U.S. 405 (2005), the Supreme Court ruled that a minimally intrusive warrantless dog sniff of the car was constitutional at traffic stops. This ruling was based on the premise that the police never entered the car and were instead on public property when they did the search. In Caballes and other previous rulings the court asserted that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy on public property. Thereby this ruling upheld the constitutionality of certain minimally intrusive warrantless searches.

Illinois v. Caballes called into question certain aspects of Kyllo v. United States. Justice Stevens asserted that the Kyllo search was only unconstitutional due to the fact that it revealed certain aspects of the home besides the presence or absence of contraband. This opened the door to the current minimally intrusive drug sniffs of the home which can only detect the presence or absence of drugs.

Florida v. Jardines

Florida v. Jardines (2013) was Supreme Court case that decided the legality of deploying drug-sniffing dogs around the perimeter of homes without a search warrant. The Supreme Court held that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore requires both probable cause and a search warrant.

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United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for a trained police dog to sniff of a person's luggage or property in a public place.

United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982), was a search and seizure case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. The high court was asked to decide if a legal warrantless search of an automobile allows closed containers found in the vehicle to be searched as well. The appeals court had previously ruled that opening and searching the closed portable containers without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, even though the warrantless vehicle search was permissible due to existing precedent.

Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court redefined what constitutes a "search" or "seizure" with regard to the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ruling expanded the Fourth Amendment's protections from an individual's "persons, houses, papers, and effects", as specified in the Constitution's text, to include any areas where a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy". The reasonable expectation of privacy standard, known as the Katz test, was formulated in a concurring opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan II.

Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace.

California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.

Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court ruled that the use of thermal imaging devices to monitor heat radiation in or around a person's home, even if conducted from a public vantage point, is unconstitutional without a search warrant. In its majority opinion, the court held that thermal imaging constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, as the police were using devices to "explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion." The ruling has been noted for refining the reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine in light of new surveillance technologies, and when those are used in areas that are accessible to the public.

Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79 (1987), is a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the extent of discretion given to police officers acting in good faith. The Court held that where police reasonably believe their warrant was valid during a search, execution of the warrant does not violate respondent's Fourth Amendment rights.

In United States constitutional law, expectation of privacy is a legal test which is crucial in defining the scope of the applicability of the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is related to, but is not the same as, a right to privacy, a much broader concept which is found in many legal systems. Overall, expectations of privacy can be subjective or objective.

Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that the use of a drug-sniffing police dog during a routine traffic stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, even if the initial infraction is unrelated to drug offenses.

California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that aerial observation of a person's backyard by police, even if done without a search warrant, does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court unanimously held that, when a police officer who is conducting a lawful patdown search for weapons feels something that plainly is contraband, the object may be seized even though it is not a weapon. By a 6-to-3 vote, however, the court held that the officer in this case had gone beyond the limits of a lawful patdown search before he could determine that the object was contraband, making the search and the subsequent seizure unlawful under the Fourth Amendment.

United States v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Fourth Amendment prevented Border Patrol officers from conducting warrantless, suspicionless searches of private vehicles removed from the border or its functional equivalent.

United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the use of an electronic surveillance device. The defendants argued that the use of this device was a Fourth Amendment violation. The device in question was described as a beeper that could only be tracked from a short distance. During a single trip, officers followed a car containing the beeper, relying on beeper signal to determine the car's final destination. The Court unanimously held that since the use of such a device did not violate a legitimate expectation of privacy there was no search and seizure and thus the use was allowed without a warrant. It reasoned that a person traveling in public has no expectation of privacy in one's movements. Since there was no search and seizure there was not a Fourth Amendment violation.

<i>United States v. Pineda-Moreno</i>

United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212 (2010) was a 2010 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case regarding the use of GPS devices. The court ruled that a placing a GPS tracking device a personal vehicle without a warrant did not violate a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights, even if the vehicle was parked in the defendant's driveway at the time the device was placed. The case was reversed and remanded by the United States Supreme Court in light of United States v. Jones.

Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452 (2011), was a decision by the US Supreme Court, which held that warrantless searches conducted in police-created exigent circumstances do not violate the Fourth Amendment as long as the police did not create the exigency by violating or threatening to violate the Fourth Amendment.

United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

<i>Florida v. Jardines</i> 2013 United States Supreme Court case

Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case which resulted in the decision that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant.

<i>Florida v. Harris</i> 2013 United States Supreme Court case

Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. Twenty-four U.S. States, the federal government, and two U.S. territories filed briefs in support of Florida as amici curiae.

Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. ___ (2016) is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the search incident to arrest doctrine permits law enforcement to conduct warrantless breath tests but not blood tests on suspected drunk drivers.

References

  1. White, Welsh S., and James J. Tomkovicz. Criminal Procedure: Constitutional Constraints upon Investigation and Proof. Newark, NJ: LexisNexis Matthew Bender, 2004. (p. 6).

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