Open-fields doctrine: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:44, 21 November 2019

Revision as of 00:53, 12 December 2019

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{{short description|U.S. legal rule allowing warrantless searches of private property not near houses}}

{{other uses2|Open-field}}

{{short description|U.S. legal rule allowing warrantless searches of private property not near houses}}

[[File:U.S. 30 in Center Township.jpg|right|thumb|Open fields near [[Lisbon, Ohio]].|alt=Rolling countryside with fields, some cultivated, others not. There is a small house at the left center.]]

The '''open-fields doctrine''' (also '''open-field doctrine''' or '''open-fields rule'''), in the [[U.S. law]] of [[criminal procedure]], is the [[legal doctrine]] that a "[[warrantless search]] of the area outside a [[property]] owner's [[curtilage]]" does not violate the [[Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution]]. However, "unless there is some other legal basis for the search," such a search "must exclude the home and any adjoining land (such as a yard) that is within an enclosure or otherwise protected from public scrutiny."<ref>''[[Black's Law Dictionary]]'' (9th ed. 2009), open-fields doctrine</ref>

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After reviewing the facts of the case and all the appellate court's opinions, Gillette considered all the arguments. The two cases Van Hoommissen had pointed to as precedent adopting the open-fields doctrine were actually not dispositive of the issue, since one had involved a search on public land and the other appeared to rely on circumstances unique to that case. In another of its own recent holdings, he noted, the state Supreme Court had also rejected ''Katz'''{{'}}s reasonable expectation test, so in the instant case the court could consider the issue without relying on it.<ref name="Dixson Supreme Court 1018–21">''Dixson II'', 1018–21</ref>

Gillette rejected the [[Textualism|textualist]] interpretation of the constitutional language that had been held by the Supreme Court and other states' courts to support the doctrine for threthree reasons. First, the court's own prior holdings recognized Article I, Section 9, as establishing a broad privacy interest beyond those items specified in it. Second, the Supreme Court had itself admitted in ''Katz'' that in extending privacy protection to the user of a phone booth it was going beyond any possible meaning of "persons, houses, papers and effects", as Justice [[Thurgood Marshall]] had noted in his ''Oliver'' dissent. Lastly, Gillette noted, if read literally the Fourth Amendment as well as Oregon's constitution would have only protected citizens in their own houses, and not in any other buildings. "If the individual has a privacy interest in land outside the curtilage of his dwelling, that privacy interest will not go unprotected simply because of its ___location."<ref name="Dixson Supreme Court 1021–22">''Dixson II'', 1021–22</ref>

Next, Gillette turned to the claim that [[common law]] recognized a distinction between the curtilage of a house and the property as a whole. In ''Hester'', Justice [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]] had cited [[William Blackstone]]'s ''[[Commentaries on the Laws of England]]'', a common reference for English common law, in holding this distinction originated there. But Gillette quoted the passage Holmes had cited, in which Blackstone discussed what constituted [[burglary]] under common law, to cast doubt on Holmes' interpretation, noting that Blackstone had included all the possible outbuildings as places where unlawful entry and theft could be punished as burglary. Blackstone's chapter on trespass likewise specifically mentioned a man's land as legally protected. "Reliance on the common-law concept of curtilage to justify excluding land outside the curtilage from the protections of either constitutional provision is misplaced", Gillette concluded."<ref name="Dixson Supreme Court 1022–23">''Dixson II'', 1022–23</ref>