Court Opinion

ID: 9722194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:19:58.710021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:31.798113
License: Public Domain

Grant, District Judge,
dissenting.
I recognize that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places, and its reach cannot turn on the presence or absence of physical intrusion into any given enclosure; and that what a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. See Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576. Defendant, in this case, was seated in the living room of *58his home with the drapes in that room drawn and was so situated that he was not visible from outside. A guest in the home could be seen, with the aid of binoculars, from a little-used alley behind the home, through a fully sheer-curtained window in an adjoining room which window was also partially covered by drapes drawn back and by potted plants placed in front of it. I feel that defendant has brought himself within the general rule referred to by Mr. Justice Harlan concurring in Katz v. United States, supra, to the effect that in order to avail himself of Fourth Amendment protection, a defendant must “have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy, and * * * that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable’.” The conduct of the police in this case in peering through what amounts to a crack in the wall of defendant’s home infringes on defendant’s constitutionally protected right to be free of warrantless governmental intrusion into his home. I feel the motion to suppress should have been sustained in toto. I respectfully dissent.