Was There a Search: Olmstead versus the United States - Case Study Example

WAS THERE A SEARCH OLMSTEAD V UNITED S Was There a Search Olmstead v United s By Was There a Search The Case of Olmstead v United States Olmstead v US is the first case in the United States involving wiretapping committed by no less than the government authorities. Olmstead was the manager of an illegitimate extensive operation where alcoholic beverages were imported, sold and possessed in violation of the National Prohibition Act (27 USCA) which precisely prohibited dealing with such intoxicating liquors. The US authorities kept a tail on Olmstead and company’s activities for months gathering evidence against the group meanwhile to ensure their conviction in a court of law. The federal prohibition officers assigned to the case resorted to tapping the telephones of Olmstead and his group, without obtaining a warrant from the court, not only to keep tab of the activities of the group but to eventually use the information gathered in the course of the telephone tapping in the subsequent case brought against Olmstead and his group (Olmstead v United States 277 US 438 [1928]). The bone of contention in this case lies in the act of wiretapping and the use of the information culled through it by the federal agents on Olmstead and his groups’ telephones to convict them. The issue in this case, which occurred in 1927 before the advent of the Anti-Wire Tapping law, is whether or not the act of the federal authorities violate Olmstead and his men’s rights under Amendment 4 and 5 of the US Constitution. The Fourth Amendment guarantees two things: one, that no unreasonable searches and seizures shall be conducted against a person, his home, his papers and effects to respect his right to privacy, and; second, an exception to this is when the search and seizure is conducted with a warrant issued by a court of law, which court can only issue if the application for a warrant is supported by a testimony under oath and the warrant itself contains the description of the specific place to be searched and the specific person or thing to be seized. On the other hand, the part of the Fifth Amendment pertinent to the case states that: “No person shall be held to answer [...] nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself ...” (US Constitution). The Supreme Court decided, in a vote of 5 to 4, that the wiretapping activities of the federal agents did not constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment and therefore the use of the information gathered from the wiretapping activities did not constitute fruits of a poisoned tree, so to speak, and therefore admissible in court. In line with this there is therefore no violation likewise of the Fifth Amendment. The majority opinion was written by Justice Taft and out of the four dissenting justices, Justice Brandeis wrote his own extensive dissenting opinion (Dash 2004). The rationale of the majority opinion, as written by Justice Taft, was made with a rather literal application of the words of the said law. According to Justice Taft, there was no searching and seizure committed because the police authorities did not physically invade the property of Olmstead since the tapping was made outside the perimeter of the property of the accused. Neither did the law, according to Taft, specifically included telephone wirings which traverse distant places and areas beyond Olmstead’s home. Although he acknowledged that the law must be construed liberally to give meaning to the intent of the legislators, Taft was adamant that the Fourth Amendment should extend its ambit beyond the meaning of houses, papers, persons, and effects to include hearing or sight. His statement that “The reasonable view is that the one who installs in his house a telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice to those quite outside, and that the wires beyond his house, and messages while passing over them, are not within the protection of the Fourth Amendment” (Olmstead v United States 277 US 438 [1928]) implied that a conversation between two people over the telephone is not private and they must not only expect but also bear the idea that the whole world is free, and within their rights, to eavesdrop on them. The line of argument that Justice Taft took to determine whether there was search or not was emphatic that there was no physical invasion of the privacy of Olmstead because the authorities did not set their foot within the perimeter of his house. This, rather than making a determination whether there was an invasion to privacy as a result of the wiretapping (McWhirter & Bible 1992). Justice Brandeis, in his dissenting opinion, asserted that the right to privacy must be applied to the individual and not to the place and therefore the issue is not whether there was a physical invasion of the property but whether the right to privacy was violated. According to Brandeis, invading a person’s rights by wiretapping is even more evil than tampering with mails because it would mean not only invading the privacy of one person but all the other persons he holds conversation with over the telephone (Olmstead v United States 277 US 438 [1928]). In the subsequent case of Katz v United States, 389 US 347, the US Supreme Court elaborated on the meaning of the word ‘search’ as applied to the Fourth Amendment. In this case, the police authorities likewise eavesdropped on the telephone conversation of the accused inside a telephone booth by attaching an electronic listening and recording device outside of the wall of the booth. The defence of the authorities was that there was no breach of the constitutionally protected area because the tapping was made outside of the booth used. In a decision which reversed previous rulings including Olmstead, the US Supreme Court held that there was “search and seizure” within the purview of the Fourth Amendment because the act of listening and recording the conversation intruded into the privacy relied upon while using the booth. In addition a two-fold test was declared to determine search and seizure: first, whether there was subjective reliance or expectation of privacy and; whether that expectation is acceptable to others as reasonable. By parallelism, there was search in Olmstead because the wiretapping intruded into his privacy. That he expected that his conversations over the phone were private was evident considering that the conversation was only between him and the person on the other end. Moreover, it is fair to say that all people expect their phone conversations to be private. As to the question of the admissibility of the evidence gathered through wiretapping, Justice Taft justified its admissibility despite implicitly accepting, at least, that the wiretapping was unethical on the ground that wisdom compelled their admissibility because of “the difficulties of bringing offenders to justice” and the exclusionary rule should only be limited to cases violating the Constitution (Olmstead v United States 277 US 438 (1928). Again, the implication is that people’s rights must be sacrificed and the unethical behavior of government agents indulged to pave the way for the conviction of the offenders. However, “it is important to emphasize that the question is not whether the intrusion could be justified – by reason of the degree of the probable cause, by the presence of a judicial warrant, or on some other ground – but whether what the officers did counts as an intrusion, as a “search” or “seizure” to which the Constitution speaks at all” (White 1994). The New Oxford English Dictionary meaning of “search” is “to try to find something by looking or otherwise seeking carefully and thoroughly” or “to examine (a place, vehicle, person) thoroughly in order to find something or someone.” It would seem that the majority opinion in Olmstead could find alliance in them. These definitions would suggest that the faculty of sight (looking, examine) is necessarily involved in the act of searching. However, laws are not interpreted merely literally but more importantly; the intent of their framers must be taken into consideration. According to Justice Brandeis, the framers of the Constitution did not merely drafted it in a narrow and limited perspective applicable only to certain limited period but to all time. It was their obvious intention that the Fourth Amendment shield the citizens from the forceful intrusion of the government into their privacy and at the time it was drafted in the 18th century, advances in technology that would make it possible for government to intrude into the privacy of people without actually physically setting foot on their houses had not been foreseen by the drafters. References Bill of Rights. US Constitution. Dash, Samuel. (2004). The Case of the Whispering Wires. The Intruders: Unreasonable Searches and Seizures from King John to John Ashcroft, Rutgers University Press, 76. Katz v United States, 389 US 347 McWhirter, Darien Auburn & Bible, Jon D. (1992). Privacy as a Constitutional Right: Sex, Drugs, and the Right to Life, Greenwood Publishing Group, 92-93. Olmstead v United States 277 US 438 (1928). http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/olmstead.htm White, James B. (1994). Plain Meaning and Translation: The Olmstead Opinions. Justice as Translation: An Essay in Cultural and Legal Criticism, University of Chicago Press, 142. Read More