Court Opinion

ID: 9548695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:07:11.708704+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:18.129977
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Justice,
dissenting:
The majority opinion impermissibly expands the scope of Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution. Accordingly, I dissent.
By their very terms, the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution, apply only to “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects.” (Emphasis added.) Nothing else is accorded constitutional protection. There is no basis for the application of exclusionary sanctions in cases to which the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures was not meant to extend, i.e., to anything beyond “persons, houses, papers and effects.” Nothing in this language has any applicability to pen registers.
The United States Supreme Court has, on several occasions, reiterated that the fourth amendment is not addressed to places or things not mentioned in the language of the amendment. Initially, in Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 59, 44 S.Ct. 445, 446, 68 L.Ed. 898 (1924), Justice Holmes succinctly stated:
“The special protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers and effects’ is not extended to the open fields. The distinction between the latter and the house is as old as the common law.”
More recently, in Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984), the Court held that the reason there was no recognizable privacy interest in open fields is that they are not houses or effects within the meaning of the language of the fourth amendment.
*754It is axiomatic that the number recording functions of the telephone company’s switching equipment did not search or seize Judy Thompson’s “persons, houses, [or] papers.” In like manner, neither did the telephone company’s switching equipment search or seize Judy Thompson’s “effects.” For purposes of the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution, an “effect” is not a dialed telephone number. Rather, “effects” are tangible property or chattels. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “effects” as follows:
“Effects. Personal estate or property; though the term may include both real and personal property. See Personal effects.” Black’s Law Dictionary 462 (5th Ed.1979).
“Personal effects. Articles associated with person, as property having more or less intimate relation to person of possessor; ‘effects’ meaning movable or chattel property of any kind. Usual reference is to the following items owned by a decedent at the time of death: clothing, furniture, jewelry, stamp and coin collections, silverware, china, crystal, cooking utensils, books, cars, televisions, radios, etc.” Id. at 1029.
Under any straightforward reading of the plain language of the two constitutional provisions at issue, neither is applicable to the numbers recorded by a pen register at the offices of the telephone company. A dialed telephone number simply is not a person, a house, a paper or an effect. Yet the majority holds, in contradiction to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979), that Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution, is applicable to the case at bar.
Carrying the majority’s holding to its logical end would necessitate a conclusion that there is constitutional protection for almost any evidence of a crime that the one suspected of that crime has not previously taken affirmative steps to display to the public. Neither the language in the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, nor Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution, can reasonably be construed to apply to pen registers as used in this case, as the United States Supreme Court has clearly held. The protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is limited to “persons, houses, papers and effects.” Universal application was never intended.
The majority extends a new privilege where none existed before. Under the majority’s holding, Art. 1, § 17, protects more than what one personally retains or controls; it also protects what has voluntarily been placed in the hands of third parties. This new privilege of protecting what has been exposed to the telephone company is not a matter of protecting one’s person, papers, house or effects. Rather, it is a departure from the clear wording of the constitutional provisions at issue and is, in effect, a judicial amendment to the Idaho Constitution. There is no justification for expanding fourth amendment (or Art. 1, § 17, Idaho Constitution) protections to pen registers. These devices do nothing but record data that telephone subscribers well know is not kept in confidence. There is not even a subjective expectation of privacy in dialing data, especially long distance data like that involved here, as such are permanently recorded for monthly billing purposes. Yet the majority holds otherwise and by its holding finds a legitimate expectation of privacy in everything that a person has not taken affirmative steps to display to the public. This is an impermissible expansion of Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution.
That is not to say that the legislature could not or should not, in its considered judgment, limit or prohibit by law the use of pen registers just as some legislatures have limited or prohibited the use of telephone taps, i.e., actually listening to or recording telephone conversations. But the Constitution does not give any authority for this Court to legislate, as it has in effect done in this case.
Accordingly, I dissent.
SHEPARD, C.J., concurs.