Seems to me I have a reasonable expectation that the police will not violate the constitution.
If we change the hypo to be conversations in Frank Gotti’s living room used against Gambino, and conversation’s in Gambino’s family room used against Gotti, both obtained by illegal wiretap, you’re right.
I’m not sure that the holding in Alderman would apply to telephone taps, as opposed to the bugging of the residence that actually happened. It might – just not sure what the expectation of privacy rules are for phone conversations.
Nothing like a circular argument to start the day.
When you are IN someone’s private residence, you certainly have a reasonable expectation of privacy in yourself and your belongings. But if you’re sitting at home and you left your ski mask, automatic weapon, and robbery note at your buddy’s house, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in them. So if your buddy’s house is illegally searched and they find the stuff, your rights weren’t violated only his, so you can’t have the criminal justice system just ignore your evidence.
Because you don’t.
I realize that’s not exactly an argument remarkable for its intricacy, but that’s the size of it: the Fourth Amendment protects you and your possessions in your home, not your possessions in someone else’s home. That other homeowner could go through your things. His other visitors could go through your things. By storing your possessions there, you’ve given up your ability to protect them from whoever might be there.
Hamlet has summarized the general thinking pretty accurately, I believe: the 4th amendment isn’t a “get out of illegal action free” card. It’s a protection of your privacy, and provides a remedy if your privacy is unreasonably violated. If someone else’s privacy is violated, you have no remedy. The Constitution doesn’t give you the right to hold contraband. It protects your privacy, and we as a society have agreed that we’re willing to pay the price of letting you go unpunished if we discover your contraband by violating your privacy. But we don’t extend that to letting you go unpunished if your rights are not violated, and we are not willing to extend your right to privacy to your possessions in someone else’s home.
Thanks for the clarification. I was assuming that the situation in the OP was that A and B were together when the police barged in.
What is circular about it?
Fact is you are supporting the police profiting from breaking the law. As long as the target of their investigation is one-step removed the police are off the hook. Since they are clearly getting bad guys you are fine with it, nevermind trampling constitutionally protected rights.
To me that is akin to someone stealing your TV and giving the TV to me. Since I am a step removed and did not violate your rights myself you should not be able to get the TV back. You can sue the thief for it.
I find it entirely reasonable to think the police should never be able to benefit from breaking the law. I find it entirely reasonable to have the expectation the police will not break the law.
So if a thief steals my lawn mower out of the neighbor’s garage (that he borrowed with my permission) then I have no redress against the thief because I had no privacy concern in my neighbor’s garage?
And since the neighbor wasn’t harmed, then he has no redress either?
Theft doesn’t depend on privacy interests, it depends on a property right.
Ok, I am a defender of the exclusionary rule and would expand it, but you are misrepresenting its opponents.
Even those opponents such as Chief Justice Rehnquist weren’t supporting the police breaking the law. Rehnquist proposed admitting the evidence (even against the person whose rights were directly violated) but punishing the police involved in the breach separately. While I think this is hopelessly naive in its faith either in the discipline ever happening, or in it discouraging the abuse, it is very different to supporting the police breaking the law.
Of course neither of those statements are true. We don’t measure theft or conversion by starting with the question of your right to privacy; your privacy interests are utterly irrelevant to the question. You could display your lawnmower on the front lawn, with a 24-hour webcam focused on it and large neon signs flashing “See the lawnmower right here right now!” Clearly your right to privacy in the lawnmower would be non-existent, but a thief that stole it would still be guilty of the crime of theft.
When the thief steals the lawnmower from your neighbor’s garage, or from your front lawn under the neon signs, your personal recourse against the thief is an action in tort for conversion, the civil counterpart to theft.
Fortunately, due to the webcam archive, proving your case will be easy. But it will have nothing whatsoever to do with your privacy rights.
Interestingly enough, your neighbor has exactly the same redress for the theft from his garage, since conversion can happen against someone who has ownership rights or the right to possession of the property at the time of the conversion, which, as a balilee, the neighbor certainly did.
Then let’s change the hypo to that.
In what way does this not incentivize police agencies to engage in misconduct, secure in the knowledge that the right amount of choreography will transmogrify their unconstitutional actions into constitutional ones?
While I agree no one ever states it as I do I think that is the upshot of what they are arguing for.
I would oppose punishing the police unless the action was egregious. I can certainly allow that mistakes can and do occur.
Bottom line however is, as it stands, the police can profit from an illegal action. That seems wrong to me.
And it looks like they might even be able to do it calculatedly.
I agree. But it isn’t that the police actions are consequence free. If your door is kicked down, you have a cause of action against the police for violation of your Fourth Amendment Rights.
I think that is a pretty shite defense, to be honest. The suit will happen long in the future, and, if you are an unsympathetic plaintiff, you are likely to be SOL.
I think we understand that property rights are not privacy rights.
I think a comparison is trying to be drawn.
If I put my lawnmower in your garage and it gets stolen I have redress available to me in a court. It is still my property even though you possess it for the moment.
So why is it so odd to assume my rights should stop at my property line as regards an illegal search? If I give you a trunk of documents to store and it gets stolen I can sue for recovery. However, if the police kick in your door and take it in an illegal search then what…nothing? Tough luck for me? The law was broken by the police and the redress for that is…? If they kick in your door and you decide to sue the police how are damages determined (aside from your perhaps broken door)? What can you do to punish the police for the illegal search?
Because both Gotti and Gambino can sue the police for their nefariously calculated misdeeds.
Balilee? Bricker must be subtly alluding to the Bible’s discussion of Fourth Amendment law:
How do police “profit” (or as put in other parts of the thread, benefit) from convictions?
And that “relief” can be figured into those calculations.
ISTM that there should be an absolute disincentive to misbehavior on the part of our law enforcement agencies; i.e., one that can’t be cost-benefitted into meaninglessness.
Absolutely. And to just add to that, posters seem to be saying that by breaking into the neighbors house and illegally seizing my property, that I have not been “harmed”. I disagree.
While I wasn’t present in the home and a search of my (lawnmower, trunk full of documents, bags of cocaine) is a smaller intrusion that a violation of my home, it is an intrusion none the less.
Do other posters not feel that I should have a reasonable assumption that my property, stored elsewhere, is protected against a warrantless search in violation of the 4th amendment?