Open Fields
Similarly, "open fields" such as pastures, open water, and woods may be searched without a warrant, on the ground that conduct occurring therein would have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
The doctrine was first articulated by the Supreme Court in Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 (1924), which stated that “the 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 decision was rendered on the ground that "open fields are not a 'constitutionally protected area' because they cannot be construed as "persons, houses, papers, effects.
In Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984), the police ignored a "no trespassing" sign and a fence, trespassed onto the suspect's land without a warrant, followed a path for hundreds of feet, and discovered a field of marijuana. The Supreme Court ruled that no search had taken place, because there was no privacy expectation regarding an open field:
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.Read more about this topic: Fourth Amendment To The United States Constitution, Exceptions To The Warrant Requirement
Other articles related to "open fields, open field, fields, field":
... but retains also a significant part of the mediaeval open field system ... Fields, divided into strips, are farmed in common among the landowners of the village ... Today, there are three open fields remaining the Mill Field, the South Field and the West Field ...
... The routes initially pass by farmland however, the open fields gradually give way to homes and businesses as the road approaches the hamlet of Savannah ... The open fields return 0.5 miles (0.8 km) from the hamlet's center, and NY 89 heads north across a mixture of open fields and marshland for roughly 10 miles (16 km) to the town of Wolcott ...
... enclosures consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes ... They also had to respect the open field system rights, when demanded, even when in practice the rights were not widely in use ... Without extinguishment, one man in an entire village could unilaterally impose the common field system, even if everyone else did not desire to continue the practice ...
... The open fields doctrine was first articulated by the U.S ... persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields." This opinion appears to be decided on the basis that "open fields are ... that a privacy expectation regarding an open field is unreasonable …open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from ...
Famous quotes containing the words fields and/or open:
“For wheresoe’er I turn my ravished eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)