Pubdate: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ) Contact: http://www.azstarnet.com/ Author: Robyn Blummer, Columnist and Editorial Writer- St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. SEARCH WARRANT SHOULD NOT BE A PRESS PASS As a nation of voyeurs, we have grown accustomed to watching people's personal business offered up on the screen. On shows like Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake, the participants have voluntarily appeared to air their dirty laundry. But what about reality-based shows like "Cops," where the cameras follow police into homes? These shows make personal and family tragedies into entertainment for the masses, and the cameras intrude into private living rooms and bedrooms where they are not invited or welcome. Obscuring faces, which "Cops" does when it can't get the subject's consent to broadcast, isn't enough to ensure privacy. Neighbors and friends easily recognize voices and a home's interior. Is a search warrant also a press pass? Should police be allowed to use the authority of a warrant to invite the press into places it couldn't otherwise go? That question will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this term. I hope the voyeurs lose. There aren't many times the right to press freedom should bend to the right to privacy. Following Princess Diana's death, three bills were introduced in Congress designed to limit the paparazzi. They were all patently unconstitutional and didn't pass. Anyone in public is fair game for the media, even pesky shutterbugs who shadow the famous. But the home should be a sanctuary from intrusion. Cameras may be free to be trained on the outside, even through cracks in the blinds, but the threshold should be inviolate. Not surprisingly, police don't agree. Police agencies across the country feed the reality-based television machine by inviting reporters and photographers along on their patrols. Sometimes, police aggressively promote this form of journalism by calling reporters to join them when a big bust is about to occur. It's good PR. No doubt the police like to see their derring- do broadcast on the evening news or on a nationally syndicated info- tainment show. Of course, the press has some responsibility for these real-life television spectacles. Its willingness to invade privacy often shows no ethical bounds. But the media don't have a legal right to break into people's homes. Only the police have that right, when properly armed with a warrant, and with that access comes the corresponding constitutional duty to limit the intrusion as much as possible. Which is why I hope the Supreme Court will tell police they can't turn a raid into an open house. One of two cases on this question before the court involves the forced entry into the home of Charles and Geraldine Wilson. At 6:45 a.m. on April 14, 1992, a team of Montgomery County, Md., police and deputy U.S. marshals entered the Wilsons' home with a Washington Post reporter and photographer in tow. They had an arrest warrant for the couple's adult son, Dominic Jerome Wilson. Charles Wilson was in his underwear, and his wife Geraldine was in a sheer nightgown at the time. The Washington Post photographer snapped pictures, and the reporter scribbled notes while Charles Wilson was forced to lie on the floor, with a deputy's knee in his back and a gun to his head. Deputies left when it became clear Dominic was not in the home. The Wilsons, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the police and marshals for a violation of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Notably, the attorney volunteering for the case is Richard Willard, who was an assistant attorney general under Edwin Meese, President Ronald Reagan's attorney general. In a ruling that defies common sense, the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals, by a 6-5 vote, found the officers not liable. The court said inviting the press into a private home to photograph an innocent couple in their nightclothes was not a violation of a clearly established constitutional right. Huh? How about four centuries of jurisprudence in England and later here that says a man's home is his castle? No place is more sacrosanct than the home under our laws and traditions. It is why the Supreme Court has ruled that even some illegal products, like obscene material, may be legally kept in the privacy of one's own home. The unwarranted intrusion of the home is the reason we have a Fourth Amendment. The Townshend Acts of 1767 reauthorized the British to use general warrants that allowed customs agents to snoop around any home they wished to search for smuggled goods. As a response, the Founders required warrants to be specific as to location and items to be searched or seized. Anyone serving the warrant must be acting in furtherance of it or have a legitimate law enforcement purpose. Reporters don't fit into this process. Often they don't even provide a check to abusive police practices, since over time reporters can get co-opted by police, exchanging favorable stories for better tips. And when the cameras are rolling, police are just as likely to heap on the swagger and macho-man antics as to tame their behavior. The 4th Circuit's decision in the Wilson case put it on a collision course with two other federal appellate courts that have ruled the other way, prohibiting police from bringing the media along on intrusive searches and seizures. The U.S. Supreme Court will resolve this split in the circuits, and in doing so will, one hopes, remind police that their job is to protect the public, not put on a show. Robyn Blumner is a columnist and editorial writer for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. - --- Checked-by: derek rea