Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984)

This case was a consolidation of two cases involving similar facts. In the first case, officers received reports that Ray Oliver was growing marijuana on his farm in rural Kentucky, and went to investigate. They drove past Oliver’s home to a locked gate that featured a “No Trespassing” sign but had a footpath around one side. The agents walked around the gate and then along the road and found a field of marijuana over a mile from Oliver’s house. Oliver was charged with possession and manufacture of a controlled substance. He sought to suppress admission of the evidence discovered by the officers as a product of an unlawful search and seizure. The district court granted the motion and suppressed the evidence, determining that Oliver had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area of the farm that was searched. Relying on Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the district court found that because of the locked gate and the “No Trespassing” sign, Oliver “had done all that could be expected of him to assert his privacy in the area of farm that was searched.” The state appealed; a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed and then, upon an en banc rehearing, reversed the district court. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Katz decision had not impaired the “open fields doctrine” put forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hester, allowing officers to enter and search a field without a search warrant.
In the second case, officers in Maine received an anonymous tip that Richard Thornton was growing marijuana in the woods behind his home. The officers entered the woods by means of a footpath between Thornton’s home and the home of a neighbor. They discovered two marijuana patches, surrounded by chicken wire and “No Trespassing” signs, in the woods behind Thornton’s home. The officers obtained a search warrant based on this information and went back to seize the marijuana as evidence against Thornton. The district court granted Thornton’s motion to suppress the fruits of the second search, concluding that the initial warrantless search was unreasonable because Thornton had posted “No Trespassing” signs and “the secluded location of the marijuana patches evinced a reasonable expectation of privacy.” The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.
In an opinion delivered by Justice Powell, the Court reversed both lower courts’ decisions suppressing the evidence. The Court relied on its earlier decision in Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 58-59, 44 S.Ct. 445, 68 L.Ed. 898 (1924), in which it first recognized the “open fields” doctrine. In Hester, the Court held that “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.” The Court stated that the decision in Hester was based on the explicit language of the Fourth Amendment, which indicates with some precision the places and things its protections encompass. The Court further stated that its interpretation of Hester and open fields was consistent with the “right to privacy” concept extant in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as put forth in Katz. The Court argued that the touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis is whether a person has a constitutionally protected “reasonable expectation of privacy”; the Fourth Amendment does not protect a merely subjective expectation of privacy, but only those expectations that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. The Court contrasted those areas in which a person has an expectation of privacy against open fields, opining that open fields “do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops that occur in open fields.” The Court held that open fields are, as a practical matter, accessible to the public and the police in ways a home, an office, or commercial structure would not be. Nor do fences or “No Trespassing” signs effectively bar the public from viewing open fields. Moreover, “the public and the police lawfully may survey the lands from the air. For these reasons, the asserted expectation of privacy in open fields is not an expectation that ‘society recognizes as reasonable.’”
The Court cautioned courts against a case-by-case analysis for these types of situations because it would not provide a workable accommodation between the needs of law enforcement and the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. Likewise, courts should not consider whether the individual chooses to conceal a “private” activity as the correct test for legitimacy. Rather, in holding that Oliver and Thornton had no legitimate expectation that their open fields would remain free from warrantless intrusion by government officers, the Court defined the correct inquiry as “whether the government’s intrusion infringes upon the personal and societal values protected by the Fourth Amendment.” The Oliver court stated that it was reaffirming Hester and clarifying the rule therein—that an individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out-of-doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home, otherwise known as the curtilage. The Court remanded the cases back to the district courts and held that “from the text of the Fourth Amendment and from the historical and contemporary understanding of its purposes, . . . an individual has no legitimate expectation that open fields will remain free from warrantless intrusion by government officers.”