Opinion ID: 1533372
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Search Warrant Requirement

Text: The first issue in this case involves a warrantless nighttime entry into a residence. The present restrictions on such conduct are well known. However, a review of the circumstances which led to the current state of the law is instructive, especially in this year which commemorates the two hundredth anniversary of the United States Constitution. The Framers of the United States Constitution were concerned with the problem of searches and seizures by public officials. The concept of the home as a privileged place, the privacy of which may not be disturbed by unreasonable governmental intrusion, is basic in a free society. The Framers were aware of the attempts that had been made by representatives of the King of England, both in England and in the American colonies, to exceed laws which confined governmental powers to search. Fundamental limitations on the power of public officials to search, which remain viable today, had been established in the American colonies as early as 1765. See Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell's State Trials 1029 (1765). [6] One of the most famous attacks on governmental authority to search was made by James Otis against general writs of assistance in Paxton's Case, Quincy's Rep. 51 (Mass.1761). Otis was concerned with what he described as the freedom of one's house, which he further characterized as one of the most essential branches of English liberty. [7] The United States Supreme Court has described the debate in Paxton's Case as perhaps the most prominent event which inaugurated the resistence of the colonies to the oppressions of the mother country. Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 625, 6 S.Ct. 524, 529, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886). John Adams described the argument in Paxton's Case as one which breathed into this nation the breath of life, and then and there the child of independence was born. 10 Works of John Adams 248 (C.F. Adams ed. 1856). When the federal Constitution was proposed in 1787, one of its most controversial features was the absence of a Bill of Rights which would secure personal liberties, including a guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. [8] The federal Bill of Rights, including the Fourth Amendment [9] to the United States Constitution, was adopted in 1791. [10] However, Delaware's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures predate those which are provided for in the Fourth Amendment. Delaware adopted a bill of rights as part of its own Constitution on September 11, 1776. [11] Section 17 of the Delaware Declaration of Rights and Fundamental Rules made specific limitations on the government's authority to search. [12] Those provisions in the Delaware Declaration were the antecedents to general provisions now found in Article I, Section 6 of the present Delaware Constitution. [13]