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Daniel Case (talk | contribs) m Disambiguated: burden of proof → burden of proof (law), non sequitur → non sequitur (fallacy); Unlinked: Fatal error |
Daniel Case (talk | contribs) →State v. Kirchoff: add to this |
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Lastly, Morse said that while the Vermont Supreme Court was not completely discarding ''Katz'' as the basis for its personalty-rooted concept of privacy, it found some issues doing so. It was not comfortable with the concept of a reasonable expectation, since that could too easily change "with political winds and the perceived exigencies of the day ... The question is not what society is prepared to accept but what the constitution requires." This formulation, Morse believed, would better protect people's privacy expectations as technology advanced. Lastly he placed the [[burden of proof (law)|burden of proof]] on the state in cases where a search such as the one in the instant case, was challenged as unconstitutional, and held that under that standard this search had violated the state constitution.<ref name="Kirchoff 994–96" />
There were two other opinions. District Judge Lewis Springer, specially assigned to sit on the court for this case due to a vacant seat, concurred but said the majority opinion should have more thoroughly grounded its arguments in the state's constitutional history rather than the federal constitution.<ref name="Kirchoff 997–99">''Kirchoff'', 997–99</ref> [[Louis P. Peck]], in one of his last opinions before retirement, dissented at length,
"I am sadly disappointed, and frustrated beyond comfort", by the majority opinion, Peck began. He likened it to a brief for the defendant in the case. "[I]t is, in my judgment, one of the most result-oriented opinions I have ever been exposed to. I am not prepared to countenance in silence the extreme and unwarranted judicial activism of which the opinion is an example."<ref name="Kirchoff 999–1008" />
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Peck also called the majority's holding that the search was unconstitutional "a grossly unfair example of police-bashing", that he himself took personally.
{{quote|The police are not psychic. At the time they entered the open fields portion of defendant's property, they had no way of knowing or of anticipating that this Court would follow, sheep-like, the decision of one of the most activist-oriented among the state courts,{{efn|''Dixson''}} or that we would reject a contrary decision by the high court of a state which borders us and is far more similar to us in size and other characteristics than the former{{efn|Peck was referring to ''State v. Linder'', in which the [[New Hampshire Supreme Court|Supreme Court of neighboring New Hampshire]] had five years previously held the open-fields doctrine applied in that state.<ref name="State v. Linder">{{cite court|litigants=State v. Linder|vol=128|reporter=N.H.|opinion=66|court=[[New Hampshire Supreme Court|N.H.]]|date=1986|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2487942038615680423|accessdate=October 3, 2019}}</ref>}} ... I would remind the majority, as it sheds its tears for the defendant, that the entry was not arbitrary. It was not an afternoon of sport for the police, on the off-chance they might just happen to stumble on marijuana or some other contraband, in much the same spirit that we hunt deer and other game. The entry was undertaken in reliance on a "tip"; with every reason to believe the search was legitimate, and it was done in good faith.}} Peck feared that the majority's decision would unnecessarily handicap the state's police in preventing crime. He accused it of "cho[osing]] the possible prestige with which it may be honored by law reviews and other constitutional activists among the courts, and legal writers, to a recognition of the rights of the individual inhabitants of the State of Vermont." At the very least, the majority should have held the issue to be decided on a case-by-case basis rather than establishing a blanket rule.<ref name="Kirchoff 999–1008" />
===''People v. Scott''===
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