SCOTUS rulz!
George at Orwellian.Org
George at Orwellian.Org
Mon Jun 11 08:25:19 PDT 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Heat-Detector.html
#
# June 11, 2001
#
# Court Rules Against Heat-Sensor Searches
#
# Filed at 11:03 a.m. ET
#
# WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police violate the Constitution if they use
# a heat-sensing device to peer inside a home without a search
# warrant, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
#
# An unusual lineup of five justices voted to bolster the Fourth
# Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and threw
# out an Oregon man's conviction for growing marijuana.
#
# Monday's ruling reversed a lower court decision that said
# officers' use of a heat-sensing device was not a search of Danny
# Lee Kyllo's home and therefore they did not need a search warrant.
#
# In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, by many measures
# the most conservative member of the court, the majority found
# that the heat detector allowed police to see things they otherwise
# could not.
#
# ``Where, as here, the government uses a device that is 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,'' Scalia wrote.
#
# While the court has previously approved some warrantless searches,
# this one did not meet tests the court has previously set, Scalia
# wrote.
#
# The decision means the information police gathered with the
# thermal device -- namely a suspicious pattern of hot spots on
# the home's exterior walls -- cannot be used against Kyllo.
#
# The court sent the case back to lower courts to determine whether
# police have enough other basis to support the search warrant
# that was eventually served on Kyllo, and thus whether any of
# the evidence inside his home can be used against him.
#
# Justices Clarence Thomas, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
# and Stephen Breyer joined the majority.
#
# Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion joined by
# Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Sandra Day
# O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy.
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