Opinion ID: 3153134
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Investigators Committed a Trespass

Text: Rahman argues that the district court should have granted his motion to suppress evidence collected during numerous searches of the Café’s basement as they violated the Fourth Amendment. Under the Fourth Amendment, “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” U.S. Const. amend. IV; Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409, 1414 (2013). The text of the Fourth Amendment is closely connected to property, and for most of our country’s history, Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass. See United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 949 (2012). However, during the latter half of the twentieth century, this court, following the Supreme Court’s example, expanded Fourth Amendment protections and deviated from an approach that was exclusively property-based. Id. at 949-50. In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Court was asked to decide whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred when an eavesdropping device was attached to a public telephone booth. In reaching its conclusion that a violation occurred, the Court said that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” Id. at 351. After Katz, courts around the country focused on whether a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” was violated to determine when a Fourth Amendment violation occurred. See Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 950. Although the Katz reasonable expectation test was the predominant test that courts used, the common-law trespass theory was still available to defendants. Id. at 952 (stating that the Katz test was added as an al10 No. 13-1586 ternative test to the common-law trespass test and was not designed to replace it). It is under this trespass theory on appeal that Rahman argues the government violated his Fourth Amendment rights, and we agree. Rahman did not argue that his rights were violated under a common-law trespass theory before the district court, and under normal circumstances we might consider his argument forfeited since the argument was available to him at the time of the search. However, because the government did not argue that Rahman forfeited this particular argument and addressed it in its appellate brief, we may reach the merits of Rahman’s argument under the “waived waiver” doctrine. See United States v. Prado, 743 F.3d 248, 251 (7th Cir. 2014) (stating that the defendant’s forfeiture of his appellate argument was absolved by the government’s failure to recognize the forfeiture and its response on the merits to defendant’s argument). After careful review, we conclude that the fire investigators’ search of the Café’s basement violated Rahman’s Fourth Amendment rights, and that certain pieces of evidence collected in the basement as a result of the search should have been suppressed. Under the common-law trespass theory, a violation occurs when government officials, without a warrant: (1) physically intrude (2) on a constitutionally protected area (3) for the purposes of obtaining information, and (4) an exception to the warrant requirement does not apply. See Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 949-52. There is no doubt that investigators physically intruded upon Rahman’s restaurant and that the restaurant is a constitutionally protected area. See Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 508 (1978) (applying Fourth Amendment protection to commercial property and stating that a warrant was reNo. 13-1586 11 quired to search the defendant’s furniture store); see also See v. City of Seattle, 387 U.S. 541, 543 (1967) (stating that “[t]he businessman, like the occupant of a residence, has a constitutional right to go about his business free from unreasonable official entries upon his private commercial property”). And neither party disputes that the investigators were on Rahman’s property to gather information. The only remaining question as to whether the investigators’ search violated the Fourth Amendment is whether an exception to the warrant requirement applies.