page_title: Horton v. California
section_title: Opinion of the Court
hierarchical_section_title: Horton v. California / Opinion of the Court
caption_attribution_description: English: Official portrait of Justice William J. Brennan, taken in 1972
context_page_description: Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless seizure of evidence which is in plain view. The discovery of the evidence does not have to be inadvertent, although that is a characteristic of most legitimate plain-view seizures. The opinion clarified the plain view doctrine of the Court's Fourth Amendment analysis.
context_section_description: Justice John Paul Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court in a 7-2 vote affirming the judgment of the California Court of Appeals. He first noted that the Fourth Amendment protected property against both search and seizure. In Arizona v. Hicks (1987), the Court had determined that if an object was in "plain view", then it did not involve any expectation of privacy that would prevent it from being "searched" or "seized". The issue here was whether Justice Stewart's opinion in Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971) required that the plain view be inadvertent, with Justice Stevens noting that it was not binding precedent. First, the nature of the object being evidence must be readily apparent. A requirement for any warrantless seizure is that "the officer be lawfully located in a place from which the object can be plainly seen, but he or she must also have a lawful right of access to the object itself."
  Justice Stevens also looked at the dissent from Coolidge, where Justice White had said:
  Let us suppose officers secure a warrant to search a house for a rifle. While staying well within the range of a rifle search, they discover two photographs of the murder victim, both in plain sight in the bedroom. Assume also that the discovery of the one photograph was inadvertent but finding the other was anticipated. The Court would permit the seizure of only one of the photographs. But in terms of the 'minor' peril to Fourth Amendment values there is surely no difference between these two photographs: the interference with possession is the same in each case and the officers' appraisal of the photograph they expected to see is no less reliable than their judgment about the other. And in both situations the actual inconvenience and danger to evidence remain identical if the officers must depart and secure a warrant.
  Justice Stevens stated that he preferred an objective test rather than a subjective test, and noted that every place that was searched was authorized to be searched under the warrant.
caption: Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., author of the dissenting opinion.
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