Opinion ID: 2484673
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Two Additional Federal Cases

Text: In two additional cases, the United States Supreme Court has addressed Fourth Amendment issues that are relevant here. First, in United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984), the Court addressed the issue of whether police, without a showing of probable cause, could temporarily seize and inspect a small portion of the contents of a package, which had been damaged in transit and was being held by a private shipping company, and then subject the contents to a field test for cocaine. After employees of a private freight carrier discovered a suspicious white powder in a damaged package and notified federal agents, the agents conducted a field chemical test on the powder and determined that it was cocaine. The federal district court denied Jacobsen's motion to suppress, and the court of appeals reversed. The United States Supreme Court reversed, reasoning as follows: A chemical test that merely discloses whether or not a particular substance is cocaine does not compromise any legitimate interest in privacy. This conclusion is not dependent on the result of any particular test. It is probably safe to assume that virtually all of the tests conducted under circumstances comparable to those disclosed by this record would result in a positive finding; in such cases, no legitimate interest has been compromised. But even if the results are negativemerely disclosing that the substance is something other than cocainesuch a result reveals nothing of special interest. Congress has decidedand there is no question about its power to do soto treat the interest in privately possessing cocaine as illegitimate; thus governmental conduct that can reveal whether a substance is cocaine, and no other arguably private fact, compromises no legitimate privacy interest. This conclusion is dictated by United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 [103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110] (1983), in which the Court held that subjecting luggage to a sniff test by a trained narcotics detection dog was not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.... Here, as in Place, the likelihood that official conduct of the kind disclosed by the record will actually compromise any legitimate interest in privacy seems much too remote to characterize the testing as a search subject to the Fourth Amendment. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 123-24 [104 S.Ct. 1652] (footnote omitted). And second, in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001), the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether police, without a warrant, could use a thermal-imaging device to scan a private home to determine if the amount of heat generated by the home was consistent with the use of high-intensity lamps used in growing marijuana. After federal agents became suspicious that Kyllo was growing marijuana in his home, agents scanned the outside of the triplex with a thermal-imaging device, which showed that the garage roof and side of the residence were inordinately warm. The agents obtained a warrant and searched the residence and found live marijuana plants inside. The federal district court denied Kyllo's motion to suppress, and the circuit court affirmed. The United States Supreme Court reversed, reasoning as follows: The Katz testwhether the individual has an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonablehas often been criticized as circular, and hence subjective and unpredictable. While it may be difficult to refine Katz when the search of areas such as telephone booths, automobiles, or even the curtilage and uncovered portions of residences is at issue, in the case of the search of the interior of homesthe prototypical and hence most commonly litigated area of protected privacythere is a ready criterion, with roots deep in the common law, of the minimal expectation of privacy that exists, and that is acknowledged to be reasonable. To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. We think that obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area constitutes a searchat least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. On the basis of this criterion, the information obtained by the thermal imager in this case was the product of a search. .... We have said that the Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house. That line, we think, must be not only firm but also brightwhich requires clear specification of those methods of surveillance that require a warrant. While it is certainly possible to conclude from the videotape of the thermal imaging that occurred in this case that no significant compromise of the homeowner's privacy has occurred, we must take the long view, from the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment forward. The Fourth Amendment is to be construed in the light of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when it was adopted, and in a manner which will conserve public interests as well as the interests and rights of individual citizens. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 149 [45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543] (1925). Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a search and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 34-40, 121 S.Ct. 2038 (citations omitted) (quoting Silverman, 365 U.S. at 512, 81 S.Ct. 679; Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980)).