Reasonable Expectation of Privacy, The Employee-Informant, and Document Seizures, Part 1

• NCJ Number: 84999
• Journal: FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Volume: 51 Issue: 8 Dated: (August 1982) Pages: 25-31
• Author(s): M Callahan
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The court decisions examined bear upon the concept of reasonable expectation of privacy in circumstances where employees of a defendant have given incriminating information to which they have access to the police, without a search warrant.

Abstract

Cases bearing upon the constitutional right to privacy have established the principle that when a person chooses to reveal his/her private affairs voluntarily to third parties, whether that revelation be in the form of written records, mail, or telephone numbers dialed, the person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in that which has been voluntarily exposed. In such circumstances, the individual is held to have assumed the risk that the party to whom such volumtary revelations are made might give the information to the police. Thus, if no reasonable expectation of privacy is violated, no search occurs, and the fourth amendment is inapplicable. Court decisions have further ruled there is no constitutional significance to informant seizures simply because the informant is an employee. Further, there is no constitutional distinction between an informant seizing verbal evidence and one seizing written information when the employee-informant has voluntarily been given access to and control of the information by the defendant. The conclusion of this article (Part 2) will examine other legal justifications for the seizure of documents by employees, potential criminal liability of employees and officers growing out of document seizures, and statutory impediments to the taking and use of certain documents. Twenty-four footnotes are provided.