Also known as: 4th Amendment standing · 4th Amend. standing · standing under the Fourth Amendment
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A threshold requirement in Fourth Amendment litigation that limits a defendant's ability to seek suppression of evidence to situations in which the government search or seizure violated that defendant's own reasonable expectation of privacy. The existence of such an expectation is evaluated under the totality of the circumstances, with relevant factors including ownership, control, and the nature and location of the property searched. Mere ownership of contraband placed inside another person's container does not by itself establish the required privacy interest.
Francisco Frost placed illegal pills inside a locked tin and gave the tin to a hotel bellhop for storage in the bellhop's employee locker. Hotel security opened the locker at police request and discovered the pills. Frost moved to suppress the evidence. Because Frost exercised no control over the locker and the hotel retained routine access, he lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the locker itself.
Fatima Flores owned a home in which several telephone conversations occurred among her guests. Federal agents recorded those conversations without a warrant. Flores sought to suppress the recordings. Her ownership of the premises supplied the privacy interest needed to challenge the interception even though she did not participate in every conversation.
Petitioners Alderman and Alderisio, along with Ruby Kolod (now deceased), were convicted in federal court of conspiring to transmit murderous threats in interstate commerce under 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 875(c). Their convictions were affirmed by the Tenth Circuit in 1967, and the Supreme Court initially denied certiorari. After denial, the petitioners alleged in a rehearing petition that Alderisio's Chicago business premises had been subjected to government electronic surveillance. The government responded by acknowledging that Alderisio's conversations had been overheard through unlawful eavesdropping. Petitioners Ivanov and Butenko were convicted in separate proceedings of conspiring to transmit national defense information to the Soviet Union under 18 U.S.C. §§ 794(a) and (c) and related charges under 18 U.S.C. § 951. The Third Circuit affirmed most convictions. Following the Alderman rehearing developments, certiorari was granted in Ivanov and Butenko on parallel questions concerning surveillance. After the convictions were affirmed and while the cases were pending, it was revealed that the United States had engaged in electronic surveillance that might have violated Fourth Amendment rights and tainted the convictions. The Supreme Court vacated the judgments and remanded each case to the District Court for adjudication of whether any government evidence supporting the convictions was the product of illegal surveillance. The government moved for modification of the remand order, proposing that surveillance records first undergo in camera inspection by the trial judge, who would disclose to petitioners and counsel only those materials found arguably relevant to the prosecution. Petitioners opposed the in camera procedure and sought full disclosure of all surveillance records to which they claimed standing. The government maintained that none of the overheard conversations were arguably relevant to the prosecutions and that disclosure of irrelevant conversations would endanger third parties or national security. The Supreme Court restored the cases for reargument specifically on the disclosure issue and the question of standing to object to the fruits of illegal surveillance.
View caseFumiko Fujimoto's bank records were obtained through an unlawful search of a third party's briefcase. Prosecutors later used the records against Fujimoto at trial. Fujimoto moved to suppress the evidence. Because the search did not invade any privacy interest belonging to Fujimoto, she lacked standing to object even though the evidence was used against her.
In September 1976, Jack Payner was indicted in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on a charge of falsifying his 1972 federal income tax return in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001. The indictment alleged that Payner denied maintaining a foreign bank account when he knew he had one at the Castle Bank and Trust Company of Nassau, Bahamas. The government's case relied on a loan guarantee agreement dated April 28, 1972, in which Payner pledged funds in his Castle Bank account as security for a $100,000 loan. Payner waived his right to a jury trial and moved to suppress the guarantee agreement. The district court consolidated the suppression hearing with the trial on the merits. After hearing evidence, the court found Payner guilty based on all evidence but determined that the government had discovered the guarantee agreement by exploiting a flagrantly illegal search of Michael Wolstencroft's briefcase on January 15, 1973. The court suppressed all government evidence except Payner's 1972 tax return and related testimony, then set aside the conviction because the remaining evidence was insufficient. The illegal search stemmed from the IRS's Operation Trade Winds investigation into American citizens' financial activities in the Bahamas, which focused on the Castle Bank in 1972. Special Agent Richard Jaffe enlisted private investigator Norman Casper to gather information. Casper arranged for Sybol Kennedy to host Wolstencroft, a Castle Bank vice president, in Miami. On January 15, 1973, while Wolstencroft dined with Kennedy, Casper stole the briefcase containing bank documents, delivered it to Jaffe, who supervised the copying of approximately 400 documents before returning it. The documents revealed connections to the Bank of Perrine in Florida, leading to subpoenas that uncovered the loan guarantee agreement. The district court found that the United States, through Jaffe, knowingly and willfully participated in the unlawful seizure. The court concluded that the government had counseled agents that the Fourth Amendment standing limitation allowed unconstitutional searches of one person to obtain evidence against third parties. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the suppression in a brief order. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
View caseFaith Fitzgerald rode as a passenger in a car driven by a friend. Officers searched the car's glove compartment without a warrant and found incriminating items. Fitzgerald moved to suppress the evidence. Because Fitzgerald had no ownership or control over the glove compartment, she possessed no reasonable expectation of privacy in that space and therefore lacked standing to challenge the search.
Petitioners were convicted of armed robbery in the Circuit Court of Kankakee County, Illinois, after a trial in which the prosecution introduced a sawed-off rifle and rifle shells seized by police from an automobile in which the petitioners had been passengers. Neither petitioner owned the automobile, and neither asserted ownership of the rifle or the shells. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the convictions after upholding the denial of a motion to suppress, and the Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. The events began when a police officer on routine patrol received a radio call reporting a robbery of a clothing store in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and describing the getaway car. The officer spotted a vehicle he believed matched the description, followed it until backup arrived, and then stopped the car. The occupants, consisting of the petitioners and two female companions with the owner driving, were ordered out of the vehicle. After the occupants exited, officers searched the interior of the car and discovered a box of rifle shells inside the locked glove compartment along with a sawed-off rifle beneath the front passenger seat. The officers then took the petitioners to the station and placed them under arrest. Before trial the petitioners moved to suppress the rifle and shells, conceding they did not own the automobile and were merely passengers while also declining to claim ownership of the seized items. The prosecutor challenged the petitioners' standing to object to the search on the ground that neither the car nor the evidence belonged to them. The trial court agreed and denied the motion to suppress without reaching the question of probable cause. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to address the standing issue because of its importance to the administration of criminal justice.
View caseNo. Standing requires a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched, not merely an ownership interest in the items seized. Courts evaluate the totality of the circumstances, including control over the container and the nature of the location.
Yes. All occupants of a vehicle are seized when police stop the car. A passenger therefore possesses standing to contest the constitutionality of the stop itself and to seek suppression of evidence obtained as a result.
No. Fourth Amendment rights are personal. A defendant may seek suppression only when the search or seizure infringed that defendant's own reasonable expectation of privacy, not when the violation affected solely a third party.
Yes. An overnight guest ordinarily possesses a reasonable expectation of privacy in the host's residence and therefore has standing to object to a warrantless search of the premises.
…dissatisfaction with reliance on "legitimate presence" to resolve Fourth Amendment questions. Trager & Lobenfeld, The Law of Standing Under the Fourth Amendment, 41 Brooklyn L. Rev. 421, 448 (1975); White & Greenspan, Standing to Object to Search and Seizure, 118 U. Pa. L. Rev. 333, 344-345 (1970). And, as we earlier noted, supra , at 142 n. 10,…