Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/394-u-s-244-606690246
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 15:55:23+00:00

Document:
The decision in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, which held that the reach of the Fourth Amendment "cannot turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure," and that every electronic eavesdropping upon private conversations is a search and seizure which, as a general rule, can comply with constitutional standards only when authorized by a magistrate on a showing of probable cause under precise limitations and safeguards, to the extent that it departed from previous holdings of the Court, is to be applied prospectively only. Pp. 246-254.
and Olmstead "can no longer be regarded as controlling," 389 U.S. at 353, recognized that those decisions had not been overruled until that day.7 True, the principles they expressed had been modified. The belief that an oral conversation could not be the object of a "search" or "seizure" had not survived.8 And in Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, we had cautioned that the scope of the Fourth Amendment could not be ascertained by resort to the "ancient niceties of tort or real property law." 365 U.S. at 511. But the assumption persisted that electronic surveillance did not offend the Constitution unless there was an "actual intrusion into a constitutionally protected area."9 While decisions before Katz may have reflected growing dissatisfaction with the traditional tests of the constitutional validity of electronic surveillance,10 the Court consistently reiterated those tests and declined invitations to abandon them.11 However clearly our holding in Katz may have been foreshadowed, it was a clear break with the past, and we are thus compelled to decide whether its application should be limited to the future.
all of the cases . . . requiring the exclusion of illegal evidence have been based on the necessity for an effective deterrent to illegal police action. . . . We cannot say that this purpose would be advanced by making the rule retrospective. The misconduct of the police . . . has already occurred and will not be corrected by releasing the prisoners involved.
We further observed that, in contrast with decisions which had been accorded retroactive effect,15 "there is no likelihood of unreliability or coercion present in a search and seizure case"; the exclusionary rule is but a "procedural weapon that has no bearing on guilt," and "the fairness of the trial is not under attack." 381 U.S. at 638, 639. Following this reasoning of Linkletter, we recently held in Fuller v. Alaska, 393 U.S. 80, that the exclusionary rule of Lee v. Florida, 392 U.S. 378, should be accorded only prospective application. Analogizing Lee to Mapp, we concluded that evidence seized in violation of § 605 of the Federal Communications Act16 was "no less relevant and reliable than that seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment," and that both decisions were merely "designed to enforce the federal law." 393 U.S. at 81.
fully justified reliance on their continuing validity. Nor had other courts theretofore held that the prohibitions of the Fourth Amendment encompassed "nontrespassory" electronic surveillance. On the contrary, only a few months before the eavesdropping in this case, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had upheld the introduction of electronic evidence obtained by the same narcotics agent with a virtually identical installation. United States v. Pardo-Bolland, 348 F.2d 316, cert. denied, 382 U.S. 944.
would reach that result even if relatively few convictions would be set aside by its retroactive application.

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