Pubdate: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 Source: Quad-City Times (IA) Copyright: 2001 Quad-City Times Contact: http://www.qctimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/857 COURT SAYS WARRANT NEEDED TO USE HEAT-SENSING DEVICE AGAINST HOME Washington - Police must get warrants before using devices that search through walls for criminal activity, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a decision that bolstered protections against high-tech monitoring of Americans' homes. The 5-4 decision, in a lineup of justices that shattered the normal ideological split, struck down the use without a warrant of a heat-sensing device that led to marijuana charges against an Oregon man. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority that police conducted an illegal search from outside the man's home. Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens backed the officers in a dissent. The two jabbed at each other throughout their respective opinions, with Stevens - adopting the conservatives' typical stance - accusing Scalia of failing "to heed the tried and true counsel of judicial restraint." Scalia called Stevens' conclusion that police acted constitutionally an "extraordinary assertion." The ruling reversed a lower court decision that said federal officers' use of the heat-sensing device was not a search of Danny Lee Kyllo's home - and therefore a warrant was not needed. Scalia wrote that the court could not cast away the Florence, Ore., man's Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches to allow police to use "sense-enhancing technology." Any evidence obtained from the interior of someone's home, which could not have been gathered legally by a physical intrusion, constitutes a search, he wrote. That's especially true, he said, when the technology is not in general public use. "This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted," Scalia concluded. Kyllo was arrested in January 1992 and charged with growing marijuana at his home. Police had trained a thermal imaging device on his home and found signs of high-intensity lights. Using those images, electricity records and an informant's tip, police got a warrant and searched Kyllo's home. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that police must get bus passengers' consent or a search warrant before squeezing their luggage to see if drugs might be inside. The court also requires a warrant to put an eavesdropping "bug" in someone's home or in a telephone booth. But the justices have said police do not need a warrant to go through someone's garbage left on the curb, fly over a backyard to see what is on the ground or put a beeper on a car to make it easier to follow. - --- MAP posted-by: Andrew