reasoning that because open fields are accessible to the public and police in ways that a home, office or commercial structure would not be, and because fences or “No Trespassing” signs do not effectively bar the public from viewing open fields, the asserted expectation of privacy in open fields is not one that society recognizes as reasonable and the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to people in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects” does not extend to open fields.
How later courts described this case
- reasoning that because open fields are accessible to the public and police in ways that a home, office or commercial structure would not be, and because fences or “No Trespassing” signs do not effectively bar the public from viewing open fields, the asserted expectation of privacy in open fields is not one that society recognizes as reasonable and the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to people in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects” does not extend to open fields.
- holding that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in open fields; “The existence of a property right is but one element in determining whether expectations of privacy are legitimate. The premise that property interests control the right of the Government to search and seize has been discredited.”
- explaining that the curtilage “is the area to which extends the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a [person’s] home and the privacies of life, and therefore has been considered part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes” (internal quotation marks omitted)
- concluding that “for most homes, the boundaries of the curtilage will be clearly marked; and the conception defining the curtilage — as the area around the home to which the activity of home life extends — is a familiar one easily understood from our daily experience.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Declined to follow by State v. Kirchoff, 156 Vt. 1 (1991)
Although we reject the per se rule in Oliver, the inquiry we have described does not wholly cast aside the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy framework that has ordered Fourth Amendment jurisprudence since Katz in 1967 and has been reiterated in the case law since.
Declined to follow by People v. Scott, 79 N.Y.2d 474 (1992)
For reasons which follow, we hold that the Oliver ruling does not adequately protect fundamental constitutional rights (see, People v P. J. Video, 68 NY2d 296, 303-306) and we decline to adopt it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by United States v. Broadhurst, 805 F.2d 849 (1986)
In this case, the construction of a greenhouse strongly suggests that Oliver is inapplicable.
The opinion
Justice White,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment and join Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion. These Parts dispose of the issue before us; there is no need to go further and deal with the expectation of privacy matter. However reasonable a landowner’s expectations of privacy may be, those expectations cannot convert a field into a “house” or an “effect.”