The United States The petitioner Mr. Katz was arrested for illegalgambling, he had been gambling over a public phone. The FBI attachedan electronic recorder onto the outside of the public phone booth. Thestate courts claimed this to be legal because the recording device was onthe outside of the phone and the FBI never entered the booth. TheSupreme Court Ruled in the favor of Katz. They stated that the FourthAmendment allowed for the protection of a person and not just a person’sproperty against illegal searches. The Fourth Amendment written in 1791 states, The right of thepeople to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, againstunreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and nowarrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath oraffirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and thepersons or things to be seized (Galloway 214). The court was unsure onweather or not they should consider a public telephone booth as an areaprotected by the fourth amendment. The court did state that: The Fourth Amendment protects people,not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in hisown home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. Butwhat he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to thepublic, may be constitutionally protected.Searches conducted without warrants have been held unlawfulnotwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause, for theConstitution requires that the deliberate impartial judgment of a judicialofficer be interposed between the citizen and the police (Maddex 201). The FBI agents found out the days and times he would use the payphone. The FBI attached a tape recorder to the outside of the telephonebooth. The FBI recorded him using the phone six different times, all sixconversations were around three minutes long. They made sure that theyonly recorded him and not anyone else’s conv...
