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M.D. Pa.: No Fourth Amendment protection against a wired CI in defendant's home

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

There is no heightened Fourth Amendment standard for a consensual recording by a wired CI sent into defendant's house to record him. Having let the CI in, the expectation of privacy "vanished," and the Third Circuit has already decided that. United States v. Caple, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98966 (M.D. Pa. December 8, 2008): Defendant attempts to distinguish these cases by pointing out that the conversation here occurred in plaintiff's home, where he had a heightened expectation of privacy. The defendant in Lee raised a similar argument. In that case, the confidential informant's recording took place in the defendant's hotel suite. Defendant argued that the recording should be suppressed, because it "occurred in [his] hotel room, a place where a person has a heightened expectation of privacy...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).