Opinion ID: 1859051
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fourth Amendment vs. Section 23

Text: Because the federal constitution contains no express right of privacy, the judge-made right that has evolved under federal law is necessarily circumscribed. Accordingly, federal courts often forego privacy analysis altogether or attempt to bootstrap privacy issues into other, express, constitutional provisions, such as the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures. The analytical model that has evolved for examining search and seizure issues, i.e., whether a search or seizure has taken place, and if so, whether it was unreasonable, flows directly from that amendment's language. While this federal model is well-suited for examining privacy issues embraced within the amendment's search and seizure language, it is ill-suited for analyzing those outside. Traditional search and seizure inquiry is unavailing when intrusive government action constitutes something other than a search or seizure as those words are commonly understood or where the usual gauges of reasonableness  probable cause or reasonable suspicion  miss the mark. Such cases fall more naturally under the right to be let alone, set out in article I, section 23, Florida Constitution: SECTION 23. Right of privacy.  Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into his private life... . Art. I, § 23, Fla. Const. Rather than engaging in the legal gymnastics required to bootstrap the present facts into traditional Fourth Amendment analysis  deciding first whether the state attorney's subpoena constitutes a seizure for constitutional purposes and then whether it is unreasonable  it is far more simple and direct to proceed under section 23. For while a broad stretch of judicial license is required in order to say that the term seizure applies to subpoena cases at all (as the federal Court was constrained to say in Dionisio and other Fourth Amendment subpoena cases), common sense dictates that a subpoena's summons constitutes a significant infringement on one's right to be let alone. Florida's right of privacy yields where the government intrusion serves a compelling state interest and [accomplishes] its goal through the use of the least intrusive means. Winfield v. Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, 477 So.2d 544, 547 (Fla. 1985). Applying this standard to the present case, I conclude that the government action passes muster under the first prong, for the State clearly has a compelling interest in gathering information relevant to an initial inquiry into suspected criminal activity, whether through use of the grand jury subpoena or that of the statutorily empowered state attorney. As to the second prong, I conclude that the subpoena's directive to appear is sufficiently narrowly tailored to pass constitutional muster only if the information sought is relevant to a lawful investigation and the witness is reasonably implicated in that inquiry.