Let’s say (hypothetically of course) that I have this… thing about door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen. Somehow, about eight or nine of them ended up buried under my crawlspace. [del]I’ve been real good about covering my tracks[/del] I’m a fine, upstanding citizen who has never been under any suspicion of any kind.
Anyhow, the other day, this goody-two-shoes Kryptonian happened to be flying over my house, and his x-ray vision happens to see [del]my stash[/del] the poor unfortunate souls who somehow were all brutally dismembered and buried in deep graves with plastic lining and a generous helping of lye. (No clue how this could have happened.) Next thing I know, the state police are banging down my door and digging up my crawl space.
Unless, of course, in a world with Superman, special laws have been passed to allow him to use his powers in ways that our police cannot. I suggest you check the complete Federal Register in your world for these exceptions.
Why wouldn’t they have probable cause? If I had broken into your house to steal all your stuff, and I stumbled across the bodies and called in a tip to the cops, wouldn’t they have probable cause then? What if, in my call to the cops, I provided a detailed description of the bodies?
Are you assuming that Superman is a federal agent or police officer? (Serious question - I don’t know if S works for the govt. or not). Because the exclusionary rule only applies to evidence discovered illegally by the government, not by private citizens. If some teenagers break into your garage to steal beer and find a fridge full of human body parts, they can absolutely report it to the police, who can get a warrant and search the place, then prosecute you.
The Supremes ruled in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), that busting marajuana growers by using infrared imaging to detect heat emanating from a house is (sans warrant) an unconstitional search. Using super X-ray vision to actually see through the walls of the home would be an unconstitutional search a fortiori.
This is sort of related. In Family Guy, when Peter Griffin went to Glenn Quagmire’s home, a contraption bound him up and positioned him in a variety of different sexual positions. Supposing Peter reported this to the police, would Glenn be arrested?
I think the police has probable cause to do a search and probably launch an investigation, but would he be in trouble if nothing turned up?
I believe thatbin pre-Crisis continuity Superman was given some special United Nations dispensation to operate as law enforcement within every member nation. If that’s the case, then he would be considered under US law a police agent and whether the evidence is admissible would depend on how he discovered it. He would need a warrant to search the house by X-ray vision, but if he discovered the bodies incident to an otherwise legal search, under exigent circumstances and probably some other circumstances I’m forgetting then it would probably be admissible.
In post-Crisis continuity I have no idea what Superman’s legal status is vis-a-vis law enforcement.
Doesn’t Kyllo rest in part on the fact that the police were using technology to detect things that the unaided eye could not detect? Assuming that Superman is a government agent for purposes of this example, I thought there were cases in which evidence detectable by police dogs with senses superior to humans was admissible even though a human agent would never have detected it. Wouldn’t Superman’s superhuman senses be akin to those of a police dog’s?
You know, I hadn’t considered that he wasn’t. I was thinking he was de facto law enforcement by membership in the Justice League.
At any rate, after he’d made the 100th case or so for the police with his x-ray vision I bet a court would find he’s at least acting as an unofficial agent of the government. Action by a private citizen can invoke Fourth Amendment protection if there are “clear indices of the Governement’s encouragement, endorsement, and participation.” Skinner v. Railway Labot Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602 (1989).
I’d argue Superman works for and with law enforcement enough to qualify. Heck, he hangs around with Batman, and that guy’s got a direct phone line to the police comissioner!
The idea is to prevent fishing expeditions by the government. Since Superman has consistently acted as a crime fighting agent, could he be considered implicitly to be an agent of the government? In other words, what’s stopping FBI from motivating a few people to set up an independent non-profit organization that snoops on people?
But isn’t that exactly what the government argued in Kyllo? That is, “Sure this thermal imagery sees things that humans can’t see, but our police dogs can smell things that humans can’t smell. Ergo, the thermal imagery should be allowed.” The Supremes rejected that argument in the Kyllo case. My intuition is that they would also reject it here because of the level of intrusion. A police dog can only smell if you have contraband in your car or on your person. It can’t detect other things. Superman would able to look inside your home and determine all kinds of things.
The usual distinction between police dogs and humans is that the Fourth Amendment is intended to protect our “reasonable expectation of privacy.” If the cops search your bedroom and discover the half-gallon economy K-Y jug, the super-realiztic plastic re-cast of your favorite porn-star’s genitals, and the nude pictures of Ernest Borgnine, we can well imagine you might be embarrassed.
The police dog may SMELL the KY, the latex, and so forth, but who cares what dog thinks of you? He cannot communicate his findings.
I think this is the reason we permit a dog-sniff around a car, for example, to not implicate the Fourth Amendment. The dog may be privvy to all sorts of information by his sniff, but he keeps his mouth shut about it.
The thermal imaging device, however, was used by people, and it gave to the users a picture of what was private area in your home.
I think, if Superman is an agent of law enforcement, then the argument in Kyllo probably would apply to him.
I would think the point of differentiation would be abilities inherent in the organism versus technology. So the court could admit evidence spotted by Superman but not by a Superman robot.
