Флорида - Райли ісі: Әуеден бақылау және жеке өмірге қатысты құқықтар

Florida v. Riley, 488 U. S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace.

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office received a tip that Michael Riley was growing marijuana on his of rural property. A deputy sheriff subsequently investigated the tip and went to Riley's mobile home. Unable to see inside a greenhouse, which was behind the defendant's mobile home, the deputy circled over the property using a helicopter. The absence of two roof panels allowed the deputy to see, with his naked eye, what appeared to be marijuana growing. A warrant was obtained and marijuana was found inside the greenhouse.

Riley successfully argued before the trial court that the aerial search violated his reasonable expectation of privacy and Fourth Amendment rights. The Florida Second District Court of Appeal disagreed, siding instead with the state, but the Florida Supreme Court agreed with Riley and overturned the Court of Appeal.

"Whether surveillance of the interior of a partially covered greenhouse in a residential backyard from the vantage point of a helicopter located 400 feet (122 m) above the greenhouse constitutes a 'search' for which a warrant is required under the Fourth Amendment and Article I, 12 of the Florida Constitution." — Justice White, quoting the Florida Supreme Court decision

Justice O'Connor felt that the plurality focused too much upon FAA regulations, "whose purpose is to promote air safety, not to protect [Fourth Amendment rights]." She deviated from the plurality opinion in arguing that the frequency of public flight in the airspace was a necessary concern, and that the mere legality of such flights was insufficient to determine whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy:

[I]t is not conclusive to observe, as the plurality does, that "[a]ny member of the public could legally have been flying over Riley's property in a helicopter at the altitude of 400 feet and could have observed Riley's greenhouse." Nor is it conclusive that police helicopters may often fly at 400 feet. If the public rarely, if ever, travels overhead at such altitudes, the observation cannot be said to be from a vantage point generally used by the public and Riley cannot be said to have "knowingly expose[d]" his greenhouse to public view. Nevertheless, O'Connor concurred with the plurality opinion because she thought the defendant still needed to show that public use of the relevant airspace was uncommon. The Justice closed by saying flights less than 400 feet (122 m) in altitude "may be sufficiently rare that police surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations of privacy."

Justice Blackmun recognized that five of the nine justices (O'Connor and the four dissenters) had agreed that "the reasonableness of Riley's expectation [of privacy] depends, in large measure, on the frequency of non police helicopter flights at an altitude of 450 feet." Like Brennan, Blackmun noticed that the main disagreement among these five justices was whether the government or the defendant had the burden of proof in establishing whether public flights above Riley's home were common or rare. Blackmun thought it was likely that such flights were quite rare, supporting Riley's case, so the government had to show they occurred with some regularity. He wrote that "burdens of proof relevant to Fourth Amendment issues may be based on a judicial estimate of the probabilities involved."