Katz v. United States

Katz v. United States 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) Parties Katz (Petitioner) vs. United States (Respondent) Procedure U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (petitioner lost) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (conviction affirmed/petitioner lost) U.S. Supreme Court (conviction overturned/petitioner won) Facts In the mid-1960s, Charles Katz was caught transmitting betting information via telephone from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston while using a public payphone. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had suspected Katz of giving out wagering information and tapped the public payphone. According to the FBI, they only listened to Katz’s phone calls and no others. Katz argued that that a phone booth was considered a constitutionally protected area under the Fourth Amendment and therefore that tapping the phone booth was a violation of the right to privacy of the user of the booth. The federal government argued that there was no physical penetration therefore it did not qualify as a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Against Katz’s wishes, the federal government introduced the phone conversations into evidence. Katz was then convicted of transmitting wagering information by telephone in violation of a federal statute. Issue Is a public telephone booth a constitutionally protected area? Is evidence obtained by attaching an electronic listening device in a public telephone booth a violation of the Fourth Amendment? Is physical penetration of a constitutionally protected area necessary before search and seizure can be considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment? What constitutes a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment? Rule Katz’s conviction was reversed by the us supreme court. Public telephone booths are constitutionally protected areas and the information obtained from them is protected under the Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure. Physical penetration is not necessary for a search and seizure to be considered as such under the Fourth Amendment. Application The United States Supreme Court used the Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure to overturn Katz’s conviction and establish that telephonic communications are considered private and protected under the Fourth Amendment. This case held that all individuals have a right to privacy in areas and situations that are considered private and a warrant must be obtained before any information can be collected for public or government use. This ruling overturned the previously established Olmstead v. United States ruling, which stated that surveillance by wiretap without any trespass did not constitute a search by the Fourth Amendment definition. This happened because the court began to recognize that the Fourth Amendment governed recorded speech as well as physical trespassing. This case established the Katz rule via the concurring Justice Harlan, which states that there is a twofold requirement for the protections that are afforded to people under the Fourth Amendment. The first requirement is that a person expects a certain amount of privacy, followed by the second requirement, which is that society recognizes that expectation as reasonable. Conclusion The United States Supreme Court found in favor of the petitioner, Katz, in that the Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to privacy and the right against searches and seizures, including those that do not involve physical contact. This sets a precedent for all other cases involving electronic or telephonic searches and seizures via phone or electronic tapping, as well as future cases with future technology. Discussion Katz v. United States was a 7-1 decision where the majority declared that all people in the United States have the right to privacy and the right against searches and seizures when it concerns telephonic means as well as physical means. Justice Black was the dissenting opinion, and Justice Marshall did not participate. The dissenting opinion voiced by Justice Black focused on the exact wording of the Fourth Amendment, and that it did not have the wording to include tapping telephones. Justice Black compared tapping telephones to eavesdropping and said that eavesdropping did happen when the Constitution was written, therefore something could have been included regarding eavesdropping if the founding fathers really did believe that things that are overheard should not be allowed to be used as evidence in a court of law. Justice Black also had the opinion that the Supreme Court used the Fourth Amendment to hold all laws violative of the Constitution that offended the Supreme Court’s concept of privacy. Justice Black believed that the Fourth Amendment protects privacy only to the extent that it prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of persons, houses, papers, and effects; it does not give a general right to the give the Supreme Court unlimited power to hold anything as unconstitutional. The ruling of this case is good for society and defendants in a similar position, however it is not great for law enforcement. The jobs of law enforcement would be easier without this ruling or if the Supreme Court ruled in the opposite way, however, with the ruling as it stands, it favors the general public and their want for privacy over their conversations. After this ruling, people have felt safer communicating with others over the telephone because they did not fear that their conversations were being overheard and used in a court of law against them. The ruling of this case does not, however, stop phone taps completely, it just means that law enforcement needs to obtain a warrant before doing anything like a phone tap, just like they would have to obtain a warrant before physically searching someone or something and seizing items or property. This case created the Katz rule, which was described first by Justice Harlan who believed that there were two steps to determining whether a person and their speech is protected under the Fourth Amendment. The first step is that the person has to have exhibited an actual expectation of privacy, followed by the second part of the test, which is that the expectation of privacy is to an extent that society agrees and recognizes as a reasonable assumption of privacy. Even in this particular case, the petitioner paid to use a public telephone booth but shut the door and expected the conversations had inside to be private information, not to be brought against him in a court of law. This case should have involved a warrant in order for the collection of evidence against Katz to be considered legal. In this case, the Fourth Amendment was used to back up the Supreme Court’s claims that everyone has a right to privacy and a right against searches and seizures, regardless of if the search and seizure is physical in nature or not. The right against search and seizure is in the Constitution, however, it does not extend to non-physical means in the Constitution itself, therefore the Supreme Court had to do some assumptions and make leaps to include telephone tapping in that right. This ruling sets a precedent for future cases involving non-physical searches and seizures, and directly overturns Olmstead v. United States, in which it was ruled that surveillance without any trespass and without the seizure of any material object falls outside the ambit of the Constitution. The ruling of Olmstead was overturned by the ruling of this case because the Supreme Court departed from the narrow viewing of the Constitution to include more points of information; Katz is a great example of this.