The Fourth Amendment and Katz
The petitioner Mr. Katz was arrested for illegal gambling, he had been gambling over a public phone. The FBI attached an electronic recorder onto the outside of the public phone booth. The state courts claimed this to be legal because the recording device was on the outside of the phone and the FBI never entered the booth. The Supreme Court ruled in the favor of Katz. They stated that the Fourth Amendment allowed for the protection of a person and not just a person's property against illegal searches. The Fourth Amendment written in 1791 states, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The court was unsure on weather or not they should consider a public telephone booth as an area protected by the fourth amendment. The court did state that: The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protec
Brennan joined, said that "The Fourth Amendment draws no lines between various substantive offenses. The arrests in cases of hot pursuit and the arrests on visible or other evidence of probable cause cut across the board and are not peculiar to any kind of crime." Mr. Justice Harlan said that like a home a telephone booth has its privacy, and the intrusion into a place that is private is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Also, warrants are very important in legal procedures of the court and must be followed through. Mr. Justice White said, I agree that the official surveillance of petitioner's telephone conversations in a public booth must be subjected to the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment...the particular surveillance undertaken was unreasonable absent a warrant properly authorizing it. Mr. Justice Fortas and Mr. Justice Douglas concurred together and said that the fourth amendment should be revised for todays technology. Although the right of the fourth amendment has come up much like the Osborne V. United States case. 5.Online. http://www.. corbett.k12.or.us/highschool/activities/ussc/stephen%20kirkinan.html 2.Hall, Kermit. The Oxford Companion to The Supreme Court of The United States. New York: Oxford, 1992. After this case the court made some requirements for electronic eavesdropping. Most of them were put in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. There are strict requirements for electronic surveillance. Warrants now have to be specified for the use of electronic devices. The Constitutional Fourth Amendment was looked at and analyzed very carefully and the Supreme
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Approximate Word count = 1100
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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