Kyllo v. U.S Case Brief

Kyllo v. U.S. , 533 U.S. ---, 121 S.Ct. 2038 (2001)

FACTS: In 1991, Agent Elliott of the U. S. Dept. of the Interior began to suspect that Kyllo was growing marijuana in his triplex house in Florence, Oregon. Because growing marijuana indoors requires the use of high-intensity lighting, he elected to use a thermal imager to scan the house. Thermal imaging units detect infrared radiation, “heat”, and display it as an image based upon relative warmth in an area. The scan, done from a vehicle across the street from the front and then the back of the house, indicated that the garage roof and a side wall of the house were relatively hot compared to the rest of the house and considerably warmer than the neighboring homes. The agent concluded that Kyllo was using grow lights. Based on tips, utility bills and the results of the scan, Elliott requested and received a federal search warrant of the house and found an indoor growing operation involving more than 100 marijuana plants.

Kyllo requested a suppression of the evidence, and was denied. He entered a conditional guilty plea and filed this lawsuit. The appellate court remanded the case back to the District Court for an evidentiary hearing concerning the intrusiveness of the thermal imaging device, and the District Court upheld the validity of the search warrant. The appellate court eventually (after a change in the composition of the court) affirmed the District Court opinion, holding that Kyllo had no subjective expectation of privacy because he made no effort to conceal the heat escaping from the home. The Court also stated that the imaging device “did not expose any intimate details of Kyllo’s life ….”

ISSUE: Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in the heat escaping from a residence?

HOLDING: Yes

DISCUSSION: The Court explored the issue of appropriate surveillance, and noted that the Court had “previously reserved judgment as to how much technological enhancement of ordinary perception from a vantage point, if any, is too much.” The Court stated that the question to be dealt with “is what limits there are upon this power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.” The Court continued, stating that “obtaining by senseenhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical ‘intrusion into a constitutionally protected area’ constitutes a search – at least where (as here) the technology is not in general public use.” In this case, the Court stated that it “must take account of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or in development.” The Court took pains to distinguish this opinion from Dow Chemical, which “involved enhanced aerial photography of an industrial complex, which does share the Fourth Amendment sanctity of the home.”

Finally, the Court held that the line must be that when “the Government uses a device that is not in general use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a ‘search’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”

This case effectively overrules LaFollette v. Commonwealth, 915 S.W.2d 747 (1996), which held that a FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) may be used to detect heat waste emanating from a residence, and that such information may be used to support a warrant.