Also known as: Katz v. United States · reasonable expectation of privacy test
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A two-part inquiry used to determine whether government action constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. The first prong asks whether the individual exhibited an actual subjective expectation of privacy. The second prong asks whether that expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
Kevin Kane entered a public telephone booth, closed the door, and spoke in a low voice while discussing private business. Federal agents attached a listening device to the exterior of the booth and recorded the conversation without a warrant. The recording captured details that formed the basis for charges against Kane.
Kurtis Kaiser and colleagues met regularly in an unlocked conference room at their manufacturing plant to discuss trade secrets. Agents attached a listening device to the exterior wall and recorded the conversations without a warrant. The recordings led to charges against Kaiser after other employees had entered the room on multiple occasions.
Joseph Burger operated a junkyard and vehicle dismantling business in Brooklyn, New York, consisting of an open lot surrounded by a high metal fence that contained vehicles and parts of vehicles. On November 17, 1982, at approximately noon, Officer Joseph Vega and four other plainclothes officers from the Auto Crimes Division of the New York City Police Department entered the junkyard to conduct an inspection pursuant to New York Vehicle and Traffic Law section 415-a5. The officers asked to see Burger's license and police book recording the acquisition and disposition of motor vehicles and parts, but Burger replied that he had neither. The officers announced their intention to conduct the inspection, Burger did not object, and the officers copied the vehicle identification numbers of several vehicles and parts present in the junkyard. After checking the numbers against a police computer, the officers determined that respondent was in possession of stolen vehicles and parts. The officers also determined that Burger possessed a wheelchair and a handicapped person's walker that had been located in a stolen vehicle. Burger was arrested and charged with five counts of possession of stolen property and one count of unregistered operation as a vehicle dismantler in violation of section 415-a1. On any given day, the Division conducts from 5 to 10 inspections of vehicle dismantlers, automobile junkyards, and related businesses. It was unclear from the record why, on that particular day, Burger's junkyard was selected for inspection. In the Kings County Supreme Court, Burger moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the inspection, primarily on the ground that section 415-a5 was unconstitutional. After a hearing, the court denied the motion. When respondent moved for reconsideration in light of a recent decision of the Appellate Division, People v. Pace, 101 App. Div. 2d 336, 475 N. Y. S. 2d 443 (1984), aff'd, 65 N. Y. 2d 684, 481 N. E. 2d 250 (1985), the court granted reargument. Upon reconsideration, the court distinguished the situation in Pace from that in the instant case. The court therefore reaffirmed its earlier determination in the instant case that section 415-a5 was constitutional. For the same reasons, the Appellate Division affirmed. 112 App. Div. 2d 1046, 493 N. Y. S. 2d 34 (1985). The New York Court of Appeals, however, reversed. 67 N. Y. 2d 338, 493 N. E. 2d 926 (1986). In its view, section 415-a5 violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. According to the Court of Appeals, the fundamental defect of section 415-a5 is that it authorizes searches undertaken solely to uncover evidence of criminality and not to enforce a comprehensive regulatory scheme. Because of the important state interest in administrative schemes designed to regulate the vehicle-dismantling or automobile-junkyard industry, we granted certiorari. 479 U. S. 812 (1986).
View caseKeisha Kincaid used a leased warehouse office on several occasions for private meetings and left personal notes inside. Agents searched the office under a warrant issued for the larger factory and seized documents belonging to Kincaid. Kincaid moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that the search violated her own privacy interest.
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 caseKieran Kelly stored a container in a third-party warehouse. Agents installed a beeper inside the container before it was placed there and monitored its movements without a warrant. The monitoring revealed the container's location inside a private residence and led to charges against Kelly.
In 1980 Drug Enforcement Administration agents learned that respondents James Karo, Richard Horton, and William Harley had ordered fifty gallons of ether from Government informant Carl Muehlenweg. With Muehlenweg's consent, agents substituted a can containing a beeper for one in the shipment and had all ten cans painted uniformly. Karo picked up the ether on September 20, 1980. Agents used both visual surveillance and beeper signals to track the can as it moved among residences in Albuquerque including Karo's house, Horton's house, and Horton's father's house. The signal later led agents to a commercial storage facility. There agents obtained a subpoena for rental records identifying locker 143 rented by Horton. Agents confirmed the can's presence through the beeper and the odor of ether. The can was subsequently moved to a second storage facility whose locker 15 was rented by Horton and Harley under an alias. On February 6, 1981, agents observed via closed-circuit video the removal of the cans from the second locker. The cans were loaded onto Horton's pickup truck. The truck traveled public highways to a house in Taos rented by Horton, Harley, and Michael Steele. Using the beeper, agents determined that the can remained inside the Taos house even after the truck departed. On February 7, the beeper revealed that the ether can was still on the premises. Agents noticed that the windows of the house were wide open on a cold windy day. On February 8, agents obtained a warrant to search the Taos residence based in part on beeper information. The warrant was executed on February 10, 1981. Horton, Harley, Steele, and Evan Roth were arrested. Cocaine and laboratory equipment were seized. Respondents were indicted under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846. The District Court granted their pretrial suppression motion. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the suppression order as to most respondents. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseKarina Kovacs rented a hotel suite and instructed staff not to enter while using the deadbolt. Officers arranged for the manager to install a concealed microphone in a vent and recorded conversations without a warrant. The recordings supplied the sole evidence for trafficking charges against Kovacs.
On the morning of November 26, 1965, agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics entered Webster Bivens's apartment in the Bronx. The agents broke open the door, handcuffed Bivens in front of his wife and young children, and thoroughly searched the apartment. They then transported Bivens to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, where he was interrogated, booked, and subjected to a visual strip search. Several days later Bivens was released on his own recognizance, and he was never indicted or prosecuted for any offense. Bivens filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York against the six agents in their individual capacities. His complaint sought fifteen thousand dollars in damages from each agent and alleged that the arrest and search were effected without a warrant, that unreasonable force was employed, and that the arrest was made without probable cause. Bivens claimed to have suffered great humiliation, embarrassment, and mental suffering as a result of the agents' conduct. The District Court dismissed the complaint on the ground that it failed to state a cause of action. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to review the judgment.
View caseKira Kapoor placed calls from her home telephone to suspected accomplices. Police obtained the numbers dialed from the telephone company without a warrant and used the list to link Kapoor to the scheme. The records formed key evidence at trial after Kapoor moved to suppress them.
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 caseThe first prong requires the individual to exhibit an actual subjective expectation of privacy. The second prong requires that the expectation be one society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
Supporting sources
No. When the room lacks locks, signs restricting access, or consistent efforts to exclude others, society does not recognize an expectation of privacy as reasonable even if participants close the door and lower their voices.
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No. A person without a lease, keys, or formal right to exclude others from a space lacks a legitimate expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable, even after repeated invited use.
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Yes. Repeatedly inviting outsiders into a room, leaving the door ajar, and failing to install locks or post signs show that the individual did not consistently treat the space as private, so any expectation fails the objective prong.
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Yes. A guest who instructs staff not to enter and uses the deadbolt exhibits a subjective expectation that society recognizes as reasonable in the interior of a rented room.
Supporting sources
…Stanley v. Georgia , 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States , 389 U.S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States , 116 U.S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States , 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill…