Florida v. Riley | ||||||
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Supreme Court of the United States |
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Argued October 3, 1988 Decided January 23, 1989 |
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Full case name | Florida v. Riley | |||||
Citations | 488 U.S. 445 (more) 109 S. Ct. 693; 102 L. Ed. 2d 835; 1989 U.S. LEXIS 580; 57 U.S.L.W. 4126 |
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Prior history | Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida | |||||
Subsequent history | None | |||||
Holding | ||||||
Helicopter surveillance at an altitude of 400 feet did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. Florida Supreme Court reversed. | ||||||
Court membership | ||||||
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Case opinions | ||||||
Plurality | White, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy | |||||
Concurrence | O'Connor | |||||
Dissent | Brennan, joined by Marshall, Stevens | |||||
Dissent | Blackmun | |||||
Laws applied | ||||||
U.S. Const. amend. IV |
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989)[1], was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace.
Contents |
A Florida county sheriff received a tip that a man was growing marijuana on his 5 acres (20,000 m2) of rural property. Unable to see inside a greenhouse, which was behind the defendant's mobile home, the sheriff circled over the property using a helicopter. The absence of two roof panels allowed the sheriff to see, with his naked eye, what appeared to be marijuana growing inside. A warrant was obtained and marijuana was found in the greenhouse. Riley successfully argued before the trial court that the aerial search violated his reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court of Appeals disagreed, siding instead with the state, but the Florida Supreme Court agreed with Riley and overturned the Court of Appeals
The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Florida Supreme Court with a four-vote plurality, arguing that the accused did not have a reasonable expectation that the greenhouse was protected from aerial view, and thus that the helicopter surveillance did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. However, the Court stopped short of allowing all aerial inspections of private property, noting that it was "of obvious importance" that a private citizen could have legally flown in the same airspace:
Also vital to the Court's ruling was the fact that the helicopter did not interfere with the normal use of the property:
Justice O'Connor felt that the plurality focused too much upon FAA regulations, "whose purpose is to promote air safety, not to protect [Fourth Amendment rights]." She deviated from the plurality opinion in arguing that the frequency of public flight in the airspace was a necessary concern, and that the mere legality of such flights was insufficient to determine whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy:
Nevertheless, O'Connor concurred with the plurality opinion because she thought the defendant still needed to show that public use of the relevant airspace was uncommon. The Justice closed by saying flights less than 400 feet (120 m) in altitude "may be sufficiently rare that police surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations of privacy."
Justice Brennan, joined by Marshall and Stevens, strongly believed that the plurality had misstated the issue, agreeing with O'Connor that the frequency of public air travel was a necessary consideration, and that the key issue in the case was whether ordinary citizens were normally in the air above the defendant’s home:
However, Brennan disagreed with O'Connor in that he believed the defendant did not necessarily need to show that public flight was rare, but rather that the state needed to show that it was common:
Justice Blackmun recognized that five of the nine justices (O'Connor and the four dissenters) had agreed that "the reasonableness of Riley's expectation [of privacy] depends, in large measure, on the frequency of non-police helicopter flights at an altitude of 400 feet." Like Brennan, Blackmun noticed that the main disagreement among these five justices was whether the government or the defendant had the burden of proof in establishing whether public flights above Riley's home were common or rare. Blackmun thought it was likely that such flights were quite rare, supporting Riley's case, so the government had to show they occurred with some regularity. He wrote that "burdens of proof relevant to Fourth Amendment issues may be based on a judicial estimate of the probabilities involved."