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Katz v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
October 17, 1967, Argued ; December 18, 1967, Decided
No. 35
Judges: Warren, Black, Douglas, Harlan, Brennan, Stewart, White, Fortas; Marshall took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Opinion by: STEWART
Opinion
MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court. LEdHN[1A] The petitioner was convicted in the District Court for the Southern District of California under an eight-count indictment charging him with transmitting wagering information by telephone from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston, in violation of a federal statute. 1 [****4] At trial the Government was permitted, over the petitioner's objection, to introduce evidence of the petitioner's end of telephone conversations, overheard by FBI agents who had attached an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the public telephone booth from which he had placed his calls. In affirming his conviction, the Court of Appeals rejected the contention that the recordings had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, [*349] because "there was no physical entrance into the area occupied by [the petitioner]." 2 [**510] We granted certiorari in order to consider the constitutional questions thus presented. 3
LEdHN[1B] [1B]
The petitioner has phrased those questions as follows:
"A. Whether a public telephone booth is a constitutionally protected area so that evidence obtained by attaching an electronic listening recording device to the top of such a booth is obtained in violation of the right to privacy of the user of the booth.
"B. Whether physical penetration of a constitutionally protected area is necessary before a search and seizure can be said to be violative of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution."
We decline to adopt this formulation of the issues. In the first place, the correct solution of Fourth Amendment problems is not necessarily promoted by incantation of the phrase "constitutionally protected area." Secondly, the Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional "right to privacy." That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. 4 Other [****6] provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion. 5 [****7] But the protection of a [**511] person's general right to privacy -- his right to be let alone by other people 6 -- is, like the [*351] protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States. 7
청원자는 켈리포니아 연방 지방 법원에 연방법 위반으로 기소 되었습니다. LA 에서 Miami 와 Boston 으로 도박 정보를 전송한 죄 입니다. FBI 는 청원자가 공중전화 박스를 통해 범행을 저지를 때 공중전화박스 위에 도청장치를 설치하여 증거를 입수 하였습니다.
연방 항소심은 도청 장치는 물리적인 침입이 아니라고 보고 원심의 유죄 판결에 동의 하였습니다.
청원자는 두개의 이슈를 내세워 주장 하였는데 첫번째로 “공중전화박스는 헌법적으로 보호 받아야 하는 영역이기 때문에 도청장치로 획득한 증거는 수정4조 위반이다.” 와 “물리적인 침입의 유무로서 수정4조 위반의 여부를 판단 할 수 없다.” 였습니다. 이에 법원(연방 대법원)은 이 이슈를 수정 하였습니다. 그 이유는 먼저 수정4조는 헌법적으로 보호 받아야 하는 "영역"에 의해 좌우 되어야 하는 것이 아니며 또한 수정 4조는 일반적인 “privacy” 권리를 보하는 조항도 아니기 때문 입니다.
Because of the misleading way the issues have been formulated, the parties have attached great significance to the characterization of the telephone booth from which the petitioner placed his calls. The petitioner has strenuously argued that the booth was a "constitutionally protected area." The Government has maintained with equal vigor that it was not. 8 But this effort to decide whether or not a given "area," viewed in the abstract, is "constitutionally protected" deflects attention from the [****8] problem presented by this case. 9 For HN1 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 protection. See Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 210; United States v. Lee, 274 U.S. 559, 563. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. [*352] See Rios v. United States, 364 U.S. 253; Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733.
법원은 수정4조는 "사람(시민)"을 보호하며 "영역"이나 장소를 보호하는 법이 아니라고 명시 했습니다. 예를 들어 설령 privacy 를 주장 하는 장소가 개인 집이나 사무실 이라 할지라도 의도적인 노출 이였다면 수정 4조를 적용 할 수 없습니다.
The Government stresses the fact that the telephone booth from which the petitioner made his calls was constructed partly of glass, so that he was as visible after he entered it as he would have been if he had remained outside. But what he sought to exclude when he entered the booth was not the intruding eye -- it was the uninvited ear. He did not shed his right to do so simply because he made his calls from a place where he might be seen. HN2 No less than an individual in a business [****10] office, 10 in a friend's apartment, 11 or in a taxicab, 12 a person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment. One who occupies it, shuts the door behind him, and pays the toll that permits [**512] him to place a call is surely entitled to assume that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world. To read the Constitution more narrowly is to ignore the vital role that the public telephone has come to play in private communication.
정부측은 공중전화 박스가 부분적으로 유리로 되어 있었기 때문에 수정4조를 적용 할 수 없다고 강조 하였지만 여기서 사적인 권리는 눈으로 보여지는 청원자의 시각적인 정보가 아니라 귀로 들리는 소리 정보 이기 때문에 법원은 이를 기각 하였습니다.
LEdHN[9] [9]The Government contends, however, that the activities of its agents in this case should not be tested by Fourth Amendment requirements, for the surveillance technique they employed involved no physical penetration of the [****11] telephone booth from which the petitioner placed his calls. It is true that the absence of such penetration was at one time thought to foreclose further Fourth Amendment inquiry, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 457, 464, 466; Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129, 134-136, for that Amendment was thought to limit only searches and seizures of tangible property. 13 But HN3 "the premise that property interests control the right of the Government to search and seize has been discredited." Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 304. Thus, although a closely divided Court supposed in Olmstead that surveillance without any trespass and without the seizure of any material object fell outside the ambit of the Constitution, we have since departed from the narrow view on which that decision rested. Indeed, we have expressly held that HN4 the Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any "technical trespass under . . . local property law." Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511. Once this much is acknowledged, and once it is recognized that the Fourth Amendment protects people -- and not simply "areas" -- against unreasonable searches and seizures, it becomes clear that the reach of that Amendment cannot turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure.
HN5 We conclude that the underpinnings of Olmstead and Goldman have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that the "trespass" doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling. The Government's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner's words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The fact that the electronic device employed to achieve that end did not happen to penetrate the wall of the booth can have no constitutional significance.
또한 정부측은 물리적인 침입이 없었기 때문에 (Olmstead, Goldman)수정4조를 적용 할 수 없다고 주장 하였으나 Olmstead, Goldman 에서는 사유지 내의 사유재산관 같은 증거를 다루었기 때문에 이번 사건에 같은 원리를 적용 할 수 없으며 정부가 도청 장치를 사용하여 증거를 입수 하는 행위는 수정 4조의 “search and seizure” 가 될 수 있다고 판시 하였습니다.
The question remaining for decision, then, is whether the search and seizure conducted in this case complied with constitutional standards. In that regard, the Government's position is that its agents acted in an entirely defensible manner: They did not begin their electronic surveillance until investigation of the petitioner's activities had established a strong probability that he was using the telephone in question to transmit gambling information to persons in other States, in violation of federal law. Moreover, the surveillance was limited, both in scope and in duration, to the specific purpose of establishing the contents of the petitioner's unlawful telephonic communications. The agents confined their surveillance to the brief periods during which he used the telephone booth, 14 and they took great care to overhear only the conversations of the petitioner himself. 15
Accepting this account of the Government's actions as accurate, it is clear that this surveillance was so narrowly circumscribed that a duly authorized magistrate, properly notified of the need for such investigation, specifically informed of the basis on which it was to proceed, and clearly apprised of the precise intrusion it would entail, could constitutionally have authorized, with appropriate safeguards, the very limited search and seizure that the Government asserts in fact took place. Only last Term we sustained the validity of such an authorization, holding that, HN6 under sufficiently "precise and discriminate circumstances," a federal court may empower government agents to employ a concealed electronic device "for the narrow and particularized purpose of ascertaining the truth of the . . . allegations" of a "detailed factual affidavit alleging the commission of a specific criminal offense." Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 329-330 Discussing that holding, the Court in Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, said that "the order authorizing the use of the electronic device" in Osborn "afforded similar protections to those . . . of conventional warrants authorizing the seizure of tangible evidence." Through those protections, "no greater invasion of privacy was permitted than was necessary under the circumstances." Id., at 57.16 Here, too, a similar judicial order could have accommodated "the legitimate needs of law enforcement" 17 by authorizing the carefully limited use of electronic surveillance.
또한 정부는 (영장을 요청 하기에 어려움이 있는 상황 이기 때문에) 수정4조의 통제 내에서 그들의 수사가가 매우 제한 적으로 진행 되었다고 주장 하였으나 법원은 정부는 영장발부 요청을 시도 하지도 않았으며 요청 하였다면 법원은 재한적인 조건으로 영장을 발부해 주었을 것이라고 설명 했습니다.
The Government urges that, because its agents relied upon the decisions in Olmstead and Goldman, and because they did no more here than they might properly have done with prior judicial sanction, we should retroactively validate their conduct. That we cannot do. It is apparent that the agents in this case acted with restraint. Yet the inescapable fact is that this restraint was imposed by the agents themselves, not by a judicial officer. They were not required, before commencing the search, to present their estimate of probable cause for detached scrutiny by a neutral magistrate. They were not compelled, during the conduct of the search itself, to observe precise limits established in advance by a specific court order. Nor were they directed, after the search had been completed, to notify the authorizing magistrate in detail of all that had been seized. In the absence of such safeguards, this Court has never sustained a search upon the sole ground that officers reasonably expected to find evidence of a particular crime and voluntarily confined their activities to the least intrusive means consistent with that end. HN7 Searches conducted without warrants have been held unlawful "notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause," Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 33, for HN8 the Constitution requires "that the deliberate, impartial judgment of a judicial officer . . . be interposed between the citizen and the police . . . ." Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 481-482. "Over and again this Court has emphasized that HN9 the mandate of the [Fourth] Amendment requires adherence to judicial processes," United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 51, and that searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment 18 -- subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions. 19
It is difficult to imagine how any of those exceptions could ever apply to the sort of search and seizure involved in this case. Even electronic surveillance substantially contemporaneous with an individual's arrest could hardly be deemed an "incident" of that arrest. 20
Nor could the use of electronic surveillance without prior authorization be justified on grounds of "hot pursuit." 21 And, of course, the very nature of electronic surveillance precludes its use pursuant to the suspect's consent.
정부측은 수정4조위반을 성립하기 위해 물리적인 침입을 요구하는 Olmstead, Goldman 의 선례에 따라 그들의 Search and Seizure 가 소급 하여 인정 되어야 한다고 주장 하였으나 이에 법원은 그렇다 하더라도 여전히 판사의 객관적인 판단을 요구하는 영장 발부 절차를 생략 한 것은 수정 4조 위반이므로 정당화 될 수 없다고 판단 하였습니다. 이번 사건은 정부요원이 청원자의 대화 내용을 우연히 듣게 된 상황도 아니고 도청 행위가 긴급체포를 요하는 예외적인 경우도 아니었습니다.
The Government does not question these basic principles. Rather, it urges the creation of a new exception to cover this case. 23 It argues that surveillance of a telephone booth should be exempted from the usual requirement of advance authorization by a magistrate upon a showing of probable cause. We cannot agree. Omission of such authorization
"bypasses the safeguards provided by an objective predetermination of probable cause, and substitutes instead the far less reliable procedure of an after-the-event justification for the . . . search, too likely to be subtly influenced by the familiar shortcomings of hindsight judgment." Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96.And bypassing a neutral predetermination of the scope of a search leaves individuals secure from Fourth Amendment [*359] violations "only in the discretion of the police." Id., at 97.
These considerations do not vanish when the search in question is transferred from the setting of a home, an office, or a hotel room to that of a telephone booth. Wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The government agents here ignored "the procedure of antecedent justification . . . that is central to the Fourth Amendment," 24 a procedure that we hold to be a constitutional precondition of the kind of electronic surveillance involved in this case. Because the surveillance here failed to meet that condition, and because it led to the petitioner's conviction, the judgment must be reversed.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
마지막으로 정부측은 공중전화 박스에 도청장치를 설치하는 사건에 한하여 수정 4조의 영장 발부 요건의 예외가 적용 되어야 한다고 주장 하였으나 법원은 판사의 객관적인 판단이 요구된다는 점에서 특별한 차이점을 발견 하지 못하고 주장을 기각 하였습니다.
컨커링과 디센팅을 따로 업로드 하겠습니다.
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