Court Opinion

ID: 9458319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:48:46.275775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:43.140661
License: Public Domain

MeCREE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the result reached by the court, but I disagree with the determination that flashing the light into the rear of the automobile did not constitute a search. A person seated in a darkened automobile at night has a right to rely upon the privacy afforded by those circumstances.
What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. . . . But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the pub-*993lie, may be constitutionally protected. [Citations omitted.]
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351-352, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). However, under all the circumstances of this case. I regard the limited invasion of appellants’ privacy by the illumination of the automobile’s interior as reasonable. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21-22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), in which the Supreme Court stated that:
. in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief” that the action taken was appropriate? [Citations omitted.]