Also known as: justified expectation of privacy · justified expectations of privacy · reasonable expectation of privacy
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A subjective expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. Government action that violates such an expectation constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Justin Jarvis places several bags of household refuse at the curb in front of his home for scheduled pickup. Officers collect and open the bags without a warrant, discovering evidence of illegal activity. Because the bags were left outside the home's curtilage for collection, Jarvis has no justified expectation of privacy in their contents.
Joy Jiang's wireless carrier maintains months of historical cell-site location information showing her phone's movements. Federal agents obtain the records through a court order rather than a warrant. Jiang retains a justified expectation of privacy in the long-term location data even though the carrier holds the records.
John Jones stays overnight as a guest in Jorge Juarez's apartment. Officers enter and search the apartment without a warrant while Jones is present. Jones possesses a justified expectation of privacy in the premises sufficient to challenge the search.
Jessica Jacobs places a telephone call from a public phone booth. Officers listen to the conversation by attaching a device to the exterior of the booth without a warrant. Jacobs exhibits a justified expectation of privacy in the contents of the call despite its public location.
Judy Jacobs dials a series of numbers from her home telephone. Police obtain a list of the dialed numbers from the telephone company without a warrant. Jacobs has no justified expectation of privacy in the numbers because she voluntarily conveyed them to a third party.
On March 5, 1976, Patricia McDonough was robbed in Baltimore, Maryland. She gave the police a description of the robber and of a 1975 Monte Carlo automobile she had observed near the scene of the crime. After the robbery, McDonough began receiving threatening and obscene phone calls from a man identifying himself as the robber. On one occasion, the caller asked that she step out on her front porch, and she saw the 1975 Monte Carlo moving slowly past her home. On March 16, police spotted a man who met McDonough's description driving a 1975 Monte Carlo in her neighborhood. By tracing the license plate number, police learned that the car was registered in the name of petitioner Michael Lee Smith. The next day, the telephone company, at police request, installed a pen register at its central offices to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner's home without obtaining a warrant or court order. The pen register revealed that on March 17 a call was placed from petitioner's home to McDonough's phone. On the basis of this and other evidence, the police obtained a warrant to search petitioner's residence. The search revealed that a page in petitioner's phone book was turned down to the name and number of Patricia McDonough, which was seized. Petitioner was arrested, and McDonough identified him as the robber in a lineup on March 19. Petitioner was indicted for robbery in the Criminal Court of Baltimore. By pretrial motion, he sought to suppress all fruits derived from the pen register. The trial court denied the suppression motion. Petitioner waived a jury, and the case was submitted to the court on an agreed statement of facts. The pen register tape and the phone book were admitted into evidence against him. Petitioner was convicted and sentenced to six years. He appealed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, but the Court of Appeals of Maryland issued a writ of certiorari to the intermediate court and affirmed the judgment of conviction. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseJackson Mutual employees discover a body inside a company apartment. Officers conduct an extensive warrantless search of the premises hours later. The occupants retain a justified expectation of privacy in the apartment that requires a warrant or recognized exception before a full search may proceed.
On October 28, 1974, undercover police officer Barry Headricks arranged to purchase a quantity of heroin from Rufus Mincey at Mincey's apartment in Tucson, Arizona. Headricks entered the apartment accompanied by an informant while nine other plainclothes officers and a deputy county attorney waited outside. After a short while, Headricks left the apartment and told the waiting officers that he had seen narcotics and narcotics paraphernalia inside. The officers then radioed for a search warrant and positioned themselves outside the apartment. Shortly thereafter the officers heard sounds of a struggle, forced entry, and a shootout followed in which Headricks was fatally wounded, Mincey was shot and left semiconscious, and another man in the apartment was also shot and later died. Mincey was taken to the hospital in critical condition, placed in the intensive care unit, and connected to breathing tubes, a stomach tube, a bladder catheter, and intravenous feeding equipment while receiving pain medication and other drugs. Homicide detectives arrived within ten minutes of the shooting, supervised removal of the wounded, and then conducted a warrantless search of the entire apartment that lasted four days. Officers opened drawers, closets, and cupboards, emptied clothing pockets, dug bullet fragments from walls and floors, pulled up sections of carpet, photographed and diagrammed every room, and seized between two hundred and three hundred objects including narcotics and paraphernalia. The evening of the shooting and again the next day, Detective Hust questioned Mincey in the intensive care unit. Unable to speak because of the breathing tube, Mincey wrote answers on paper while in pain and under medication; he repeatedly stated that he wanted a lawyer and asked that questioning stop, yet Hust continued the interrogation for several hours across multiple sessions interrupted only by medical treatment or loss of consciousness. At a single trial Mincey was convicted of murder, assault, and three counts of narcotics offenses; the trial court admitted both the evidence seized during the four-day search and Mincey's hospital statements over his objections. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the murder and assault convictions on state-law grounds but affirmed the narcotics convictions, upholding the search under a homicide-scene exception and finding the statements voluntary. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the constitutional questions presented by the search and the statements.
View caseA person must first exhibit an actual subjective expectation of privacy. That expectation must then be one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
An overnight guest generally possesses a justified expectation of privacy in the host's home and may challenge a search of the premises.
No justified expectation of privacy exists in garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.
Individuals retain a justified expectation of privacy in historical cell-site location information even when the records are maintained by third-party providers.
A person present in another's apartment solely for a brief commercial transaction without staying overnight generally lacks a justified expectation of privacy in the premises.
…(a) that an enclosed telephone booth is an area where, like a home and unlike a field, a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy; (b) that electronic as well as physical intrusion into a place that is in this sense private may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment; and (c) that the invasion of a…