Oliver v. United States

466 U.S. 170, 104 S. Ct. 1735, 80 L. Ed. 2d 214, 1984 U.S. LEXIS 55, 52 U.S.L.W. 4425

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: April 17, 1984
• Docket: 82-15
• Status: Published

Opinions

Justice Powell

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The “open fields” doctrine, first enunciated by this Court in Hester v. United States, 265 U. S. 57 (1924), permits police officers to enter and search a field without a warrant. We granted certiorari in these cases to clarify confusion that has arisen as to the continued vitality of the doctrine.

I

No. 82-15.Acting on reports that marihuana was being raised on the farm of petitioner Oliver, two narcotics agents of the Kentucky State Police went to the farm to investigate.¹ Arriving at the farm, they drove past petitioner's house to a locked gate with a “No Trespassing” sign. A footpath led around one side of the gate. The agents walked around the gate and along the road for several hundred yards, passing a bam and a parked camper. At that point, someone standing in front of the camper shouted: “No hunting is allowed, come back up here.” The officers shouted back that they were Kentucky State Police officers, but found no one when they returned to the camper. The officers resumed their investigation of the farm and found a field of marihuana over a mile from petitioner’s home.

Petitioner was arrested and indicted for “manufacturing]” a “controlled substance.” 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1). After a pretrial hearing, the District Court suppressed evidence of the discovery of the marihuana field. Applying Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967), the court found that petitioner had a reasonable expectation that the field would remain private because petitioner “had done all that could be expected of him to assert his privacy in the area of farm that was searched.” He had posted “No Trespassing” signs at regular intervals and had locked the gate at the entrance to the center of the farm. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 82-15, pp. 23-24. Further, the court noted that the field itself is highly secluded: it is bounded on all sides by woods, fences, and embankments and cannot be seen from any point of public access. The court concluded that this was not an “open” field that invited casual intrusion.

The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed the District Court. 686 F. 2d 356 (1982).² The court concluded that Katz, upon which the District Court relied, had not impaired the vitality of the open fields doctrine of Hester. Rather, the open fields doctrine was entirely compatible with Katz’ emphasis on privacy. The court reasoned that the “human relations that create the need for privacy do not ordinarily take place” in open fields, and that the property owner’s common-law right to exclude trespassers is insufficiently linked to privacy to warrant the Fourth Amendment’s protection. 686 F. 2d, at 360.³ We granted certiorari. 459 U. S. 1168 (1983).

No. 82-1273. After receiving an anonymous tip that marihuana was being grown in the woods behind respondent Thornton’s residence, two police officers entered the woods by a path between this residence and a neighboring house. They followed a footpath through the woods until they reached two marihuana patches fenced with chicken wire. Later, the officers determined that the patches were on the property of respondent, obtained a warrant to search the property, and seized the marihuana. On the basis of this evidence, respondent was arrested and indicted.

The trial court granted respondent’s motion to suppress the fruits of the second search. The warrant for this search was premised on information that the police had obtained during their previous warrantless search, that the court found to be unreasonable.⁴ “No Trespassing” signs and the secluded location of the marihuana patches evinced a reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, the court held, the open fields doctrine did not apply.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed. 453 A. 2d 489 (1982). It agreed with the trial court that the correct question was whether the search “is a violation of privacy on which the individual justifiably relied,” id., at 493, and that the search violated respondent’s privacy. The court also agreed that the open fields doctrine did not justify the search. That doctrine applies, according to the court, only when officers are lawfully present on property and observe “open and patent” activity. Id., at 495. In this case, the officers had trespassed upon defendant’s property, and the respondent had made every effort to conceal his activity. We granted certiorari. 460 U. S. 1068 (1983).⁵

h — I

The rule announced in Hester v. United States was founded upon the explicit language of the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment indicates with some precision the places and things encompassed by its protections. As Justice Holmes explained for the Court in his characteristically laconic style: “[T]he 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 distinction between the latter and the house is as old as the common law.” Hester v. United States, 265 U. S., at 59.⁶

Nor are the open fields “effects” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In this respect, it is suggestive that James Madison’s proposed draft of what became the Fourth Amendment preserves “[t]he rights of the people to be secured in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their other property, from all unreasonable searches and seizures . . . .” See N. Lasson, The History and Development of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 100, n. 77 (1937). Although Congress’ revisions of Madison’s proposal broadened the scope of the Amendment in some respects, id., at 100-103, the term “effects” is less inclusive than “property” and cannot be said to encompass open fields.⁷ We conclude, as did the Court in deciding Hester v. United States, that the government’s intrusion upon the open fields is not one of those “unreasonable searches” proscribed by the text of the Fourth Amendment.

hH HH

This interpretation of the Fourth Amendment’s language is consistent with the understanding of the right to privacy expressed in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Since Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), the touchstone of Amendment analysis has been the question whether a person has a “constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy.” Id., at 360 (Harlan, J., concurring). The Amendment does not protect the merely subjective expectation of privacy, but only those “expectation[s] that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Id., at 361. See also Smith v. Maryland, 442 U. S. 735, 740-741 (1979).

A

No single factor determines whether an individual legitimately may claim under the Fourth Amendment that a place should be free of government intrusion not authorized by warrant. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 152-153 (1978) (Powell, J., concurring). In assessing the degree to which a search infringes upon individual privacy, the Court has given weight to such factors as the intention of the Framers of the Fourth Amendment, e. g., United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 7-8 (1977), the uses to which the individual has put a location, e. g., Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257, 265 (1960), and our societal understanding that certain areas deserve the most scrupulous protection from government invasion, e. g., Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980). These factors are equally relevant to determining whether the government’s intrusion upon open fields without a warrant or probable cause violates reasonable expectations of privacy and is therefore a search proscribed by the Amendment.

In this light, the rule of Hester v. United States, supra, that we reaffirm today, may be understood as providing that an individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home. See also Air Pollution Variance Bd. v. Western Alfalfa Corp., 416 U. S. 861, 865 (1974). This rule is true to the conception of the right to privacy embodied in the Fourth Amendment. The Amendment reflects the recognition of the Framers that certain enclaves should be free from arbitrary government interference. For example, the Court since the enactment of the Fourth Amendment has stressed “the overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic.” Payton v. New York, supra, at 601.⁸ See also Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961); United States v. United States District Court, 407 U. S. 297, 313 (1972).

In contrast, 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. Moreover, as a practical matter these lands usually are accessible to the public and the police in ways that a home, an office, or commercial structure would not be. It is not generally true that fences or “No Trespassing” signs effectively bar the public from viewing open fields in rural areas. And both petitioner Oliver and respondent Thornton concede that the public and police lawfully may survey lands from the air.⁹ For these reasons, the asserted expectation of privacy in open fields is not an expectation that “society recognizes as reasonable.”¹⁰

The historical underpinnings of the open fields doctrine also demonstrate that the doctrine is consistent with respect for “reasonable expectations of privacy. ” As Justice Holmes, writing for the Court, observed in Hester, 265 U. S., at 59, the common law distinguished “open fields” from the “curti-lage,” the land immediately surrounding and associated with the home. See 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *225. The distinction implies that only the curtilage, not the neighboring open fields, warrants the Fourth Amendment protections that attach to the home. At common law, the curtilage is the area to which extends the intimate activity associated with the “sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life,” Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 (1886), and therefore has been considered part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes. Thus, courts have extended Fourth Amendment protection to the curtilage; and they have defined the curtilage, as did the common law, by reference to the factors that determine whether an individual reasonably may expect that an area immediately adjacent to the home will remain private. See, e. g., United States v. Van Dyke, 643 F. 2d 992, 993-994 (CA4 1981); United States v. Williams, 581 F. 2d 451, 453 (CA5 1978); Care v. United States, 231 F. 2d 22, 25 (CA10), cert. denied, 351 U. S. 932 (1956). Conversely, the common law implies, as we reaffirm today, that no expectation of privacy legitimately attaches to open fields.¹¹

We conclude, from the text of the Fourth Amendment and from the historical and contemporary understanding of its purposes, that an individual has no legitimate expectation that open fields will remain free from warrantless intrusion by government officers.

B

Petitioner Oliver and respondent Thornton contend, to the contrary, that the circumstances of a search sometimes may indicate that reasonable expectations of privacy were violated; and that courts therefore should analyze these circumstances on a case-by-case basis. The language of the Fourth Amendment itself answers their contention.

Nor would a case-by-case approach provide a workable accommodation between the needs of law enforcement and the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. Under this approach, police officers would have to guess before every search whether landowners had erected fences sufficiently high, posted a sufficient number of warning signs, or located contraband in an area sufficiently secluded to establish a right of privacy. The lawfulness of a search would turn on “ ‘[a] highly sophisticated set of rules, qualified by all sorts of ifs, ands, and buts and requiring the drawing of subtle nuances and hairline distinctions . . . New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454, 458 (1981) (quoting LaFave, “Case-By-Case Adjudication” versus “Standardized Procedures”: The Robinson Dilemma, 1974 S. Ct. Rev. 127, 142). This Court repeatedly has acknowledged the difficulties created for courts, police, and citizens by an ad hoc, case-by-case definition of Fourth Amendment standards to be applied in differing factual circumstances. See Belton, supra, at 458-460; Robbins v. California, 453 U. S. 420, 430 (1981) (Powell, J., concurring in judgment); Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 213-214 (1979); United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 235 (1973). The ad hoc approach not only makes it difficult for the policeman to discern the scope of his authority, Belton, supra, at 460; it also creates a danger that constitutional rights will be arbitrarily and inequitably enforced. Cf. Smith v. Goguen, 415 U. S. 566, 572-573 (1974).¹²

IV

In any event, while the factors that petitioner Oliver and respondent Thornton urge the courts to consider may be relevant to Fourth Amendment analysis in some contexts, these factors cannot be decisive on the question whether the search of an open field is subject to the Amendment. Initially, we reject the suggestion that steps taken to protect privacy establish that expectations of privacy in an open field are legitimate. It is true, of course, that petitioner Oliver and respondent Thornton, in order to conceal their criminal activities, planted the marihuana upon secluded land and erected fences and “No Trespassing” signs around the property. And it may be that because of such precautions, few members of the public stumbled upon the marihuana crops seized by the police. Neither of these suppositions demonstrates, however, that the expectation of privacy was legitimate in the sense required by the Fourth Amendment. The test of legitimacy is not whether the individual chooses to conceal assertedly “private” activity.¹³ Rather, the correct inquiry is whether the government’s intrusion infringes upon the personal and societal values protected by the Fourth Amendment. As we have explained, we find no basis for concluding that a police inspection of open fields accomplishes such an infringement.

Nor is the government’s intrusion upon an open field a “search” in the constitutional sense because that intrusion is a trespass at common law. The existence of a property right is but one element in determining whether expectations of privacy are legitimate. “ ‘The premise that property interests control the right of the Government to search and seize has been discredited.’” Katz, 389 U. S., at 353 (quoting Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 304 (1967)). “[E]ven a property interest in premises may not be sufficient to establish a legitimate expectation of privacy with respect to particular items located on the premises or activity conducted thereon.” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S., at 144, n. 12.

The common law may guide consideration of what areas are protected by the Fourth Amendment by defining areas whose invasion by others is wrongful. Id., at 153 (Powell, J., concurring).¹⁴ The law of trespass, however, forbids intrusions upon land that the Fourth Amendment would not proscribe. For trespass law extends to instances where the exercise of the right to exclude vindicates no legitimate privacy interest.¹⁵ Thus, in the case of open fields, the general rights of property protected by the common law of trespass have little or no relevance to the applicability of the Fourth Amendment.

V

We conclude that the open fields doctrine, as enunciated in Hester, is consistent with the plain language of the Fourth Amendment and its historical purposes. Moreover, Justice Holmes’ interpretation of the Amendment in Hester accords with the “reasonable expectation of privacy” analysis developed in subsequent decisions of this Court. We therefore affirm Oliver v. United States; Maine v. Thornton is reversed and remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1 It is conceded that the police did not have a warrant authorizing the search, that there was no probable cause for the search, and that no exception to the warrant requirement is applicable.

2 A panel of the Sixth Circuit had affirmed the suppression order. 657 F. 2d 85 (1981).

3 The four dissenting judges contended that the open fields doctrine did not apply where, as in this case, “reasonable effortfs] [have] been made to exclude the public.” 686 F. 2d, at 372. To that extent, the dissent considered that Katz v. United States implicitly had overruled previous holdings of this Court. The dissent then concluded that petitioner had established a “reasonable expectation of privacy” under the Katz standard. Judge Lively also wrote separately to argue that the open fields doctrine applied only to lands that could be viewed by the public.

4 The court also discredited other information, supplied by a confidential informant, upon which the police had based their warrant application.

5 Respondent contends that the decision below rests upon adequate and independent state-law grounds. We do not read that decision, however, as excluding the evidence because the search violated the State Constitution. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court referred only to the Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution and purported to apply the Katz test; the prior state cases that the court cited also construed the Federal Constitution. In any case, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court did not articulate an independent state ground with the clarity required by Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983).

Contrary to respondent’s assertion, we do not review here the state courts’ finding as a matter of “fact” that the area searched was not an “open field. ” Rather, the question before us is the appropriate legal standard for determining whether search of that area without a warrant was lawful under the Federal Constitution.

The conflict between the two cases that we review here is illustrative of the confusion the open fields doctrine has generated among the state and federal courts. Compare, e. g., State v. Byers, 359 So. 2d 84 (La. 1978) (refusing to apply open fields doctrine); State v. Brady, 406 So. 2d 1098 (Fla. 1981) (same), with United States v. Lace, 669 F. 2d 46, 50-51 (CA2 1982); United States v. Freie, 545 F. 2d 1217 (CA9 1976); United States v. Brown, 473 F. 2d 952, 954 (CA5 1973); Atwell v. United States, 414 F. 2d 136, 138 (CA5 1969).

6 The dissent offers no basis for its suggestion that Hester rests upon some narrow, unarticulated principle rather than upon the reasoning enunciated by the Court’s opinion in that case. Nor have subsequent cases discredited Hester*s reasoning. This Court frequently has relied on the explicit language of the Fourth Amendment as delineating the scope of its affirmative protections. See, e. g., Robbins v. California, 453 U. S. 420, 426 (1981) (opinion of Stewart, J.); Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 589-590 (1980); Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 178-180 (1969). As these cases, decided after Katz, indicate, Katz’ “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard did not sever Fourth Amendment doctrine from the Amendment’s language. Katz itself construed the Amendment’s protection of the person against unreasonable searches to encompass electronic eavesdropping of telephone conversations sought to be kept private; and Katz’ fundamental recognition that “the Fourth Amendment protects people — and not simply ‘areas’ — against unreasonable searches and seizures,” see 389 U. S., at 353, is faithful to the Amendment’s language. As Katz demonstrates, the Court fairly may respect the constraints of the Constitution’s language without wedding itself to an unreasoning literalism. In contrast, the dissent’s approach would ignore the language of the Constitution itself as well as overturn this Court’s governing precedent.

7 The Framers would have understood the term “effects” to be limited to personal, rather than real, property. See generally Doe v. Dring, 2 M. & S. 448, 454, 105 Eng. Rep. 447, 449 (K. B. 1814) (discussing prior cases); 2 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *16, *384-*385.

8 The Fourth Amendment’s protection of offices and commercial buildings, in which there may be legitimate expectations of privacy, is also based upon societal expectations that have deep roots in the history of the Amendment. See Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U. S. 307, 311 (1978); G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U. S. 338, 366 (1977).

9 Tr. of Oral Arg. 14-15, 58. See, e. g., United States v. Allen, 675 F. 2d 1373, 1380-1381 (CA9 1980); United States v. DeBacker, 493 F. Supp. 1078, 1081 (WD Mich. 1980). In practical terms, petitioner Oliver’s and respondent Thornton’s analysis merely would require law enforcement officers, in most situations, to use aerial surveillance to gather the information necessary to obtain a warrant or to justify warrantless entry onto the property. It is not easy to see how such a requirement would advance legitimate privacy interests.

10 The dissent conceives of open fields as bustling with private activity as diverse as lovers’ trysts and worship services. Post, at 191-193. But in most instances police will disturb no one when they enter upon open fields. These fields, by their very character as open and unoccupied, are unlikely to provide the setting for activities whose privacy is sought to be protected by the Fourth Amendment. One need think only of the vast expanse of some western ranches or of the undeveloped woods of the Northwest to see the unreality of the dissent’s conception. Further, the Fourth Amendment provides ample protection to activities in the open fields that might implicate an individual’s privacy. An individual who enters a place defined to be “public” for Fourth Amendment analysis does not lose all claims to privacy or personal security. Cf. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 766-767 (1979) (Burger, C. J., concurring in judgment). For example, the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable arrest or unreasonable seizure of effects upon the person remain fully applicable. See, e. g., United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411 (1976).

11 Neither petitioner Oliver nor respondent Thornton has contended that the property searched was within the curtilage. Nor is it necessary in these cases to consider the scope of the curtilage exception to the open fields doctrine or the degree of Fourth Amendment protection afforded the curtilage, as opposed to the home itself. It is clear, however, that the term “open fields” may include any unoccupied or undeveloped area outside of the curtilage. An open field need be neither “open” nor a “field” as those terms are used in common speech. For example, contrary to respondent Thornton's suggestion, Tr. of Oral Arg. 21-22, a thickly wooded area nonetheless may be an open field as that term is used in construing the Fourth Amendment. See, e. g., United States v. Pruitt, 464 F. 2d 494 (CA9 1972); Bedell v. State, 257 Ark. 895, 521 S. W. 2d 200 (1975).

12 The clarity of the open fields doctrine that we reaffirm today is not sacrificed, as the dissent suggests, by our recognition that the curtilage remains within the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Most of the many millions of acres that are “open fields” are not close to any structure and so not arguably within the curtilage. And, for most homes, the boundaries of the curtilage will be clearly marked; and the conception defining the curtilage — as the area around the home to which the activity of home life extends — is a familiar one easily understood from our daily experience. The occasional difficulties that courts might have in applying this, like other, legal concepts, do not argue for the unprecedented expansion of the Fourth Amendment advocated by the dissent.

13 Certainly the Framers did not intend that the Fourth Amendment should shelter criminal activity wherever persons with criminal intent choose to erect barriers and post “No Trespassing” signs.

14 As noted above, the common-law conception of the “curtilage” has served this function.

15 The law of trespass recognizes the interest in possession and control of one’s property and for that reason permits exclusion of unwanted intruders. But it does not follow that the right to exclude conferred by trespass law embodies a privacy interest also protected by the Fourth Amendment. To the contrary, the common law of trespass furthers a range of interests that have nothing to do with privacy and that would not be served by applying the strictures of trespass law to public officers. Criminal laws against trespass are prophylactic: they protect against intruders who poach, steal livestock and crops, or vandalize property. And the civil action of trespass serves the important function of authorizing an owner to defeat claims of prescription by asserting his own title. See, e. g., 0. Holmes, The Common Law 98-100, 244-246 (1881). In any event, unlicensed use of property by others is presumptively unjustified, as anyone who wishes to use the property is free to bargain for the right to do so with the property owner, cf. R. Posner, Economic Analysis of Law 10-13, 21 (1973). For these reasons, the law of trespass confers protections from intrusion by others far broader than those required by Fourth Amendment interests.