Court Opinion

ID: 9863355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 03:54:56.949348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:41:49.513540
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE APPLETON, dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision that defendant had no constitutionally protected privacy interest to prohibit a video recording of his home. While there is no doubt that the government agent, Harold Meyers, could report to the police any evidence of wrongdoing he saw occurring in defendant’s home and testify to the same at defendant’s trial, the video recording constitutes a warrant-less search that is unlawful under the fourth amendment to the constitution. U.S. Const., amend. IV Testimony of an undercover source may be attacked at trial. A video recording cannot be rebutted or diminished in terms of evidentiary veracity. I am not unaware that other courts have determined this issue to the contrary. See Davis, 326 F.3d at 367. I find the extensive analysis, however, made of this issue by the dissent of Justice Harlan in United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 28 L. Ed. 2d 453, 91 S. Ct. 1122 (1971), to be much more probative. I see no reason to marginalize the clear constitutional prohibition against warrantless searches and seizures for either police expediency or prosecutorial overkill. The person sent into defendant’s home by the police could have easily reported to them what, if anything, he had seen and that information could have been used to obtain a search warrant in due course.