Criminal Law and Procedure Decisions: Kyllo v. United States</titl< <body>  <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/wss-lp.js"></script> <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/hbx-0250.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://ehg-findlaw.hitbox.com/HG?hc=we76&cd=1&hv=6&ce=u&hb=DM531216MLSZ&n=LP&vcon=NO+JAVASCRIPT&vpc=HBX0250u" border="0" width="1" height="1"> </noscript>  <div id="main"> <div id="doc3" class="pro"> <div id="bd"> <div class="yui-g" id="header"> <div id="header_sub_center"> <h1 id="logo"><a href="http://lp.findlaw.com"><b>FindLaw | Find a Lawyer. Find Answers.</b></a></h1> <div id="question"> <h3><a href="http://www.findlaw.com/" class="c_4">Non-Professional? Visit our consumer site »</a></h3> <div class="c_4"><a href='http://login.findlaw.com/scripts/register?dest=http://sol.lp.findlaw.com/2000/kyllo.html'>Register</a> or <a href='http://login.findlaw.com/scripts/login?dest=http://sol.lp.findlaw.com/2000/kyllo.html'>Log-In</a><br/></div> </div> <div id="primary_nav"> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/" class="research research_selected">Research the Law</a></li> <li><a href="http://lp.findlaw.com/law-practice-management/" class="practice">Manage Your Practice</a></li> <li><a href="http://lp.findlaw.com/law-career-and-education/" class="career">Manage Your Career</a></li> <li><a href="http://news.lp.findlaw.com/" class="newscommentary">News & Commentary</a></li> <li class="last"><a href="http://marketcenter.findlaw.com/" class="marketcenter">Market Center</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="yui-g" id="main_ctnt"> <div id="main_child"> <div id="main_ctnt_center_top" class="yui-g shareright"> <div id="search_box"> <form id="search" action="http://lawcrawler.findlaw.com/scripts/lc.pl" method="GET"> <input TYPE=hidden NAME="sites" value="pro"> <input id="search_txt" class="dark_g" type="text" name="entry" value="Search FindLaw" onfocus="if (this.value == 'Search FindLaw') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Search FindLaw';}"/> <a id="search_btn" href="#" onclick="document.forms.search.submit();">Search</a> </form> </div>  </div> <div id="main_ctnt_center_mid" class="yui-g">  <div class="bread_crum"> <ul id="bc_nav"> <li class="bc_link"><a href="#" class="nav_hd"><span>Research the Law</span></a> <ul class="bc_ctnt" id="bc1_box"> <li> <div class="line"></div> <div class="issues individual"> <h4>Primary Materials</h4> <ul> <li><a href="http://guide.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/">Cases & Codes</a></li> <li><a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casesummary/index.html">Opinion Summaries</a></li> <li><a href="http://forms.lp.findlaw.com/">Forms & Contracts</a></li> <li><a href="http://library.findlaw.com/">Law Articles</a></li> </ul> <ul> <li><a href="http://guide.lp.findlaw.com/01topics/">Practice Areas</a></li> <li><a href="http://guide.lp.findlaw.com/11stategov/">Jurisdictions</a></li> <li><a href="http://westlegaledcenter.findlaw.com/home/homepage.jsf?sc_cid=Findlawclecntrtab">CLE</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.findlaw.com/toc.html">View all »</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="issues individual"> <h4>Resource Centers</h4> <ul> <li><a href="http://technology.findlaw.com/">Law Technology</a></li> <li><a href="http://practice.findlaw.com/">Practice Management</a></li> <li><a href="http://corporate.findlaw.com/">Corporate Counsel</a></li> <li><a href="http://stu.findlaw.com/">Law Students</a></li> </ul> <ul> <li><a href="http://marketcenter.findlaw.com/">Market Center</a></li> <li><a href="http://legalrecords.findlaw.com/">Thomson Legal Record</a></li> <li><a href="http://careers.findlaw.com/">Legal Careers</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.lawyermarketing.com/">Lawyer Marketing</a></li> </ul> </div> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="bc_link limit"></li> </ul> </div>  <div id="main_ctnt_center_mid" class="yui-g narrow">  <div id="sub_ctnt" class="yui-g home"> <div class="yui-g home_mid_ctnt"> <div class="yui-g ad_interior_top"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">top728();</script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">pop_under();</script></div>   <div class="yui-g intro"> <h1 class="c_1">Criminal Law Summaries</h1> <hr /> <div id="textbox"><h5><a href="http://www.findlaw.com">FindLaw</a> > <a href="../index.html">Criminal Law Summaries</a> > Kyllo v. United States</h5><P align="center"><b>Fourth Amendment – What Is a Search?</b></p><p><b>Case: <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/99-8508.html">Kyllo v. United States</A></b></p><p><b>Issue</b>: “[W]hether the use of a thermal-imaging device aimed at a private home from a public street to detect relative amounts of heat within the home constitutes a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”</p><p><b>Facts</b>: Federal agent William Elliot believed Petitioner Danny Kyllo was growing marijuana at home. High intensity heat generating lamps are often used to facilitate such cultivation. Elliot aimed an Agema Thermovision 210 thermal imager at Kyllo’s home from the passenger seat of a vehicle located across the street from the front of the house and on the street in back of the house. Elliot wanted to see if the heat emanating from Kyllo’s home was consistent with the use of high-intensity lamps. “Thermal imagers detect infrared radiation, which virtually all objects emit, but which is not visible to the naked eye. The imager converts radiation into images based on relative warmth – black is cool, white is hot, shades of gray connote relative differences.” The scan of Kyllo’s home was conducted at 3:20 a.m. and took only a few minutes. The scan showed that the garage roof and one side wall were relatively hot compared to the rest of Kyllo’s home and substantially warmer than the neighboring homes in Kyllo’s triplex. Armed with this information, an informer’s tip, and Kyllo’s subpoenaed utility bills, Elliot obtained a warrant to search Kyllo’s home. The search revealed over 100 marijuana plants under cultivation as well as the high-intensity lamps suspected by Elliot. Kyllo unsuccessfully moved to suppress the evidence and entered a conditional guilty plea. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the intrusiveness of the Agema 210. After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court reaffirmed its earlier denial of the motion to suppress. This ruling was based upon the District Court’s finding that the thermal imager was non-intrusive, showed a crude visual image of heat being radiated from outside the house, did not show any people or activity within the walls of the home, could not penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities, and observed no intimate details of the home. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that Kyllo had no subjective expectation of privacy, because he did not attempt to conceal the amount of heat emanating from the home, and no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy, because the imager did not expose intimate details of his life, “only amorphous ‘hot spots’ on the roof and exterior walls.” </p><p><b>Holding</b>: “Where . . . the Government uses a [sense-enhancing] device, not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a ‘search’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.” The Ninth Circuit was accordingly reversed.</p><p><b>Reasoning</b>: Justice Scalia, writing for the Court, began with the Fourth Amendment’s provision that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” A man’s right to retreat into the privacy of his home free from unreasonable government intrusion stands “at the very core” of the Amendment. With few exceptions, warrantless searches of the home are unreasonable and hence unconstitutional. The question of what constitutes a Fourth Amendment “search” is more difficult, however. Formerly, mere visual surveillance of a home was (at least from outside of the property) not a search, because Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tethered to property-based notions such as trespass. Somebody who was looking into a home, but not trespassing on the property, was therefore not conducting a search. Since the advent of <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/389/347.html">Katz v. United States</a>, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), however, a Fourth Amendment search occurs only when the Government violates a person’s subjective expectation of privacy which society is prepared to accept as objectively reasonable. "We have subsequently applied this principle to hold that a Fourth Amendment search does not occur – even when the explicitly protected location of a <U>house</U> is concerned – unless ‘the individual manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the object of the challenged search,’ and ‘society [is] willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable.’”</p><p>While the <U>Katz</U> formulation may be difficult to refine in certain settings, “in the case of the search of the interior of homes … there is a ready criterion, with roots deep in the common law, of the minimal expectation of privacy that <U>exists</U>, and that is acknowledged to be reasonable.” Obtaining “by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of a home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical ‘intrusion into a constitutionally protected area,’ constitutes a search – at least where … the technology … is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Based on this test, the information obtained by the Agema Thermovision 210 “was the product of a search.” While it is true that the imager detected “only heat radiating from the external surface of the house,” it “obtained information regarding the interior of the home” and “reveal[ed] the relative heat of various rooms in the house.” That equivalent types of information can potentially be obtained by some other means “does not make lawful the use of means that violate the Fourth Amendment.” Besides, on the night in question no outside observer could have determined the heat locked inside the home absent thermal imaging. It is irrelevant that the thermal imaging did not detect “private activities occurring in private areas,” or “intimate details.” Due to the sanctity of the home in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, “[in] the home . . . all details are intimate details.” Moreover, determining which details of home life are intimate would involve the Court in a jurisprudence of intimacy for which it was ill-suited. The Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house and that line must be bright. While it was possible to conclude that use of the thermal imager in this case impinged only slightly on privacy interests, the Court decided to take the long view “from the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment forward.” The Fourth Amendment must be construed “in light of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when it was adopted.”</p><p>The judgment of the Ninth Circuit was reversed and remanded for further proceedings. The District Court needed to determine whether the search warrant was supported by probable cause absent the thermal imager information and, if not, whether there was some other basis for admitting the evidence discovered in the search.</p><p><b>Other Opinions</b>: Justice Stevens joined by Justices Rehnquist, O’Connor and Kennedy, dissented. In the dissent’s view there was “a distinction of constitutional magnitude” between through-the-wall surveillance giving an observer or listener “direct access to information in a private area” and the thought processes used to draw inferences from information in the public domain. To Stevens, the imager was used to conduct a classic plain-view search. Kyllo knowingly exposed to public view the heat emanating from the outside of his home and thus such information was not entitled to Fourth Amendment protection. The conclusions about the interior of Kyllo’s home reached by the officers were no different in nature than conclusions reached through examination of the contents of discarded garbage, pen register data, or subpoenaed utility records – none of which constitutes a search. The police do not have to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity viewable by the public and neither should they have to avert other senses. This case is distinguishable from the electronic bugging of a phone booth involved in <U>Katz</U>, because in <U>Katz</U> the actual content of the conversation was heard. “[I]t would be as if in this case, the thermal imager presented a view of the heat-generating activity inside [Kyllo’s] home.” If the bug in <U>Katz</U> had only revealed the relative volume of sound leaving the phone booth, no search would have occurred. “Since what was involved in this case was nothing more than drawing inferences from off-the-wall surveillance, rather than any ‘through the wall’ surveillance, the officers’ conduct did not amount to a search and was perfectly reasonable.” </p><p><b>Comment</b>: The decision boils down to this. The Court is far more willing to find subjective and objective expectations of privacy in the context of the home. It was no doubt painful for Justice Scalia to have to place his opinion within the framework of the <U>Katz</U> “expectation of privacy” test, since he strongly disapproves of that framework. Moreover, Scalia made clear that the limitation of the holding to sense-enhancing technology “not in general public use” was compelled by the Court’s precedent, and not by his own view of the Fourth Amendment.</p></div> </div>       <div id="fl_container3"> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <div id="fl_label">Ads by FindLaw</div> </div> <script> hide_box('fl_container3'); </script>   <div id="fl_container_goog"> <script language="JavaScript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/lp/google.js"></script> <script language="JavaScript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script> </div>  </div> </div> <div class="nav_right rn_inner">  <div class="sections yui-g"> <h2 class="right" style="color:#666666;">Welcome Legal Professionals</h2> <p>FindLaw provides the resources to help you practice law. 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